Punishments
by AmorphousExplorer
Summary: Pokémon everywhere are being punished. They do not know why. They do not know when. Nor where, nor how. Few survive, and those who do only help punish others. After years of this suffering without reprieve, two servants escape into this dark world. The strange duo, a genius hawlucha and a talented mudkip, attempt to do what Arceus won't: help them understand. Help them fight back.
1. Prologue 1: From the Snow

**Prologue**

Sterling scraped his talons through the snow, breaking the frozen ice and allowing the blood caught within to return to the earth. Judging by how it had seeped into the snow surrounding the tarp and by the labored breaths of its two sources, he gave them one to two hours before they returned to the earth as well.

Unless, of course, he called off his reconnaissance task and dragged the dying duo back to base. It would mark yet another defeat for Reconnaissance and Relay. Even with his great record in the division, he knew that he'd be expected to take the fall.

Already dreading the consequences, the braviary scowled and shook off some stray flakes of snow. This situation reminded him of all the reasons he never brought the newer move-ups on tasks like this.

A small cough came from one of the pokémon on the tarp - a small blue mudkip, a gash in his side causing him a great amount of pain. The froslass leaned down and wrapped the corner of the tarp around him. In the endless sea of bone-chilling frost and stone named the Snowfields, it wasn't even close to enough warmth.

"Hey little guy, we're going to take you to somewhere safe," she promised.

The damned froslass seemed to be proud of herself, considering she had just doomed her first mission to failure. Her choice to save the two pokémon impressed the braviary in all the wrong ways. Slowly but surely, they would drown in it.

And thanks to an amateur who should know better, he was once again helpless to stop it. He glowered silently at the novice, who waited for him to raise hell about her behavior. Only on a second thought did Sterling decide to give it to her.

"They'll be someplace warm, alright, while we sit in this frost and bury them in the snow."

"Seriously," she begged, exasperated, "the mudkip might hear you. He'll panic." Sterling continued regardless, knowing that the mudkip was too weak to hear them.

"Yes," Sterling begged back in return, "give me more advice on how to rescue pokémon. I love receiving chastisements from my inferiors."

"I'm trying my best."

"You're out of line."

"Does this look like I'm patting myself on the back? I know that this is way out of line!" She argued. "But I can bring them back to base while you complete our mission. What do we lose, then?"

Far from convinced, he adjusted his long, dark cloak and looked away. "This mission was to be completed by us, together. Taking the hawlucha and mudkip back to base is not beneficial to our goal."

"You're _Sterling the Silver Wing!" _She yelled, appalled. "You'd probably rather take this on solo, anyway." Even if she did show him respect, Sterling wouldn't allow that honor to distract him from this insubordination.

"I would love to do so - but you've been assigned to me, Glace. Therefore your failure is my failure, and the group of punishers from the South shall get away without us ever knowing why they came up this far in the first place. Two young pokémon failing to flee from their Punishments is not unusual - those punishers were."

An icy arm pointed at the braviary accusingly. "Saving pokémon is our priority. It's the foundation of who we are. Do you really want to trade their lives for a chance to see what some punishers are doing? That's not what the leaders want, and you know it!"

Perhaps he had been a little too lenient while preparing for this mission. An accusation of infidelity only proved to Sterling how comfortable Glace felt around him. It just wouldn't do._  
_

With a piercing cry, he brandished his giant left wing from under his cloak. A gleaming silver frame gave the wing both weight and power as it smashed into the snow. The violent explosion of white dust made Glace cry and jump away.

"Don't you dare talk down to me, Glace!" He roared. "I'll lay a third body down on that tarp if you do! You're not experienced enough to understand, yet, but there is a such thing as winning a battle and losing the war. These two are the battle, Glace, and those punishers-"

"S-Sterling, watch out!"

Roused by the crashing wing, the young mudkip had sprung back onto his feet. He was far too tired to do anything else other than gasp and stare at the braviary, and they both knew it. So instead of trying to charge, the child sprung towards the other pokémon on the tarp - a hawlucha - and covered him from whatever attack came next.

A rattling breeze brought the mudkip back down to his stomach. That look Sterling received from him for his tantrum, though, continued. It was threatening, daring them to make a move. And, most surprisingly, intimidating enough to make a trained rescuer fear the injured child it came from.

The display forced Sterling to reconsider the two. Sterling assumed the mudkip to be no older than ten, yet he survived several hours against both wound and weather. No child should be able to survive the two for so long, let alone instinctively try to protect someone else with what life they had left. He was certainly trained, then... but the veteran had never seen a mudkip or a hawlucha in-base before. Research and Recruitment didn't have a hand in this phenomenon. They wouldn't even allow a ten year old and a sixteen year old out of base.

His conclusion was so absurd, he waited patiently for Glace to put it forward first. "There you have it," she whispered. The silver wing's entrance had obviously rattled her, but not quite enough to stifle her arguing. "That's why the punishers came up here: to bring these two to Mount Freeze for their punishments. That's the battle _and_ the war, right?"

Unlike before, they at least tried to work together on figuring out the strange pair. "You're telling me that these two somehow survived Mount Freeze? We have lost countless teams to the Mount Freeze Punishment. Even its outside is dangerous - dangerous enough that the punishers choose to avoid it."

Glace nodded understandingly. Everyone who had served in Rescue and Retrieval knew - or rather, once knew - confident pokémon that were eaten up by the horrifying labyrinths locked away within the cold, lonely punishment. "I really do think that's what happened, although I'm not sure what it means."

Sterling shook his head clear of snow and confusion. "This has to be a ruse by the punishers. They want us to take them back out of curiosity or pity." Once again, Glace's eyes became determined to protect the two, but he couldn't have it. As much as Sterling wanted to listen, it was far too dangerous. "This is setting ourselves up for betrayal."

"I guarantee," a raspy voice called out suddenly, "that this wasn't my intention at all."

Sterling quickly lifted his wing from the snow and turned to face the approaching houndoom. Even in a place as solitary as the Snowfields, being idle for so long only invited danger. Their argument lasted too long. He cursed under his breath and readied himself for a fight.

Glace instantly blocked the path to the tarp. "Damn it, it's one of the punishers!" Snow began to quake near her feet, proving her willingness to fight. "Sterling, what's our plan?"

"Stay in front of the tarp, Glace. I'll come around and deal with the houndoom."

Something wasn't right, however, with both the houndoom's approach and the area surrounding them. By the time the braviary began to understand, it was too late to warn the froslass he swore to protect.

The snow quaked violently behind Glace, and it wasn't under her control. "Glace, we've been tricked!"

* * *

A lucario shot up from underneath Glace's feet, somehow punching through the unmoved ground. The entrance baffled the braviary. That surprise multiplied for the shocked froslass, who took the full brunt of displaced snow.

Seeing through the light snowfall was difficult, but Sterling barely saw the outline of a large mound of plowed snow in the distance. Recruitment and Research, the branch responsible for mission preliminaries, had never failed him so completely. A lucario capable of digging posed not one but _two _deadly threats - threats he had no clue existed until that lucario's arm spikes were moving towards Glace's body. _  
_

Even so they had been successfully ambushed, Sterling mustered up his confidence; Glace simply drifted away from the lucario and her swinging paws. Clever tactics or not, the punisher couldn't hit a ghost Glace's choice to move up to Reconnaissance and Relay excited every team who heard; she was the first ghost type - a type suited to this furtive trade - to enter the division. It made her a prized asset to everyone.

Glace knew her strengths well and immediately went on the offensive. "Stupid move, punisher - you're at a serious disadvantage!" With snow still running down its body, the lucario jumped away as the furious froslass caused the snow around her to explode violently.

Expecting foul play from the houndoom, Sterling planted his talons and prepared to charge. It never came - the punisher seemed content with watching its ally fight a hopeless battle. Whether it was their politics at work or pure apathy, allowing the lucario to die was something they could agree on._  
_

But politics weren't to blame for the houndoom's hesitance. Once he had taken a few steps forward, Sterling caught sight of the charmander draped across his back. He was so limp, he had looked like an orange cape before. Whatever purpose brought them to the north, the punishers had obviously come unprepared. Or, at least, unprepared for the weather. They had ambushed the two scouts just fine, a fact that confounded the braviary._  
_

Without the fear of a counterattack, Glace repeatedly threw out everything she had, from summoning blizzards to simply flinging mounds of snow around herself. The lucario dodged the reckless attacks easily, pushing through the cold and knocking away the glancing blows Glace managed to land.

And when the lucario finally worked her way up to the froslass, something happened so quickly that Sterling couldn't quite catch it. All he knew is that Glace suddenly cried out and the punisher jumped away from the resulting frozen rage. A sharp icicle split up from the ground and cut the lucario's leg. She didn't even flinch as it tore through, leaving a shallow cut in its wake.

Glace gripped her face and wiped desperately. Sterling hated to admit it to himself, but he began to worry. "Glace, what happened?" He called out. "What did they do?"

"The lucario... she... she _spat _on me!" Indignant fury filled the ice pokémon's eyes. "How dare you?"

Now that the lucario finally stopped moving, Sterling realized that there was something off about her appearance. He knew of two teams in Rescue and Retrieval led by lucario, and neither of them had that dull red fur on their arms, and their spikes didn't look quite like the ones she had. Nor had he ever seen a user of the aura look so... _simple._

Lucario by nature were incredibly aggressive fighters, yet this one hardly kept her stance together. She was self-taught, he concluded. Leaning on her natural talent to carry her through fights, and falling back to sneaky tactics when it couldn't. After exhausting her tries at a fair fight, the lucario played a trick hidden under her loose stance.

Keeping her distance, the lucario shrugged under her raised paws. "I'm sorry," she said nervously, "it can't be fun to be spat on. but I'm not sure if I can win otherwise."

"Win? Ha! Don't worry about the spitting, lucario - I'll just make sure your icy tomb kills you all the more slowly!" Glace shrieked and went on the offensive. Confident in her advantage, she charged forward, trying to get to a distance where she couldn't possibly miss.

Sterling's heart stopped. Even if ghost types could drift through an opponent's physical attacks, there still had to be something to hit. Paws couldn't stick to that form, but spit could. Not wasting any time nor giving Glace a second chance, the braviary leaped over the two injured pokémon and rushed towards the young recruit.

"Glace, get away from her! She's marked you!"

"Watch closely, Silver Wing, I'm about to make up for my mistakes!" She ignored her superior and continued forward valiantly.

And the lucario's long foot slammed into her head, causing the struck pokémon to flip several times before hitting the soft ground. Confused and dazed, Glace tried to claw her way through the snow. There were no handholds, and the froslass scrabbled in place as the lucario loomed over her, waiting.

Sterling spread out his famed steel wing and charged full-speed at the punisher. If more blood was to be shed in the Snowfields, Sterling would ensure that it was that of the punishers.

The lucario saw the braviary coming and backed away. "W-whoa, relax! You'll hurt someone with that!"

Something more important captured her attention. A sudden look of horror appeared on her face, and it didn't come from the oncoming attacker. Every bounding step brought the silver wing closer, yet she seemed frozen in place.

Both punishers and pokémon found within the punishments alike feared the wing. They ran from it, cried at it sight and what it represented: a painful, crushing defeat. Hitting an immobile target simply never happened - he shut his eyes, not wishing to see the aftermath.

At the last second, red paws shot up and caught the wing. Steel and silver collided against one another in an explosion of fiery heat and sparks, One foot slid back and the lucario silently pushed against the wing with impossible might. Every ounce of strength he put into the blow became absorbed and planted harmlessly in the punisher's sturdy legs.

It was physically impossible. Sterling never panicked, but now his thoughts were doused in sheer chaos. She withstood the full brunt of the wing, treating its brutal power like a child's toy. No crushed bones, no limbs reduced to dust, nothing that should have easily resulted from the blow. An experienced witness of the supernatural, Sterling somehow couldn't understand why the lucario was so durable._  
_

Slowly, the lucario lowered his wing and tossed him aside. He had expected a brutal attack to fall - perhaps even his death - for such a reckless move. Instead, his opponent walked off. Anyone who could block his best wing certainly didn't tire from a few minutes of fighting, but the lucario could hardly take in the crisp air. Something in the blank Snowfields interested her far more than victory.

"G-Grabbe?"

Still half-trapped a shocked frenzy, Sterling coughed and sputtered away the white powder he breathed in. he twisted himself towards the lucario. "Who is Grabbe?"

Glace figured out the word's meaning before Sterling could. "Stay away from them!" She yelled as the punisher walked onto the tarp. "If you even dare touch them again...?"

Unable to speak, the lucario sat down wordlessly and picked up the hawlucha. "Grabbe... you're so cold. And Acker too... p-please don't leave me. Not here. F-forgive me, I thought you were only unconscious..." she sobbed into the hawlucha's bloodied chest.

Suddenly more desperate than willing to fight, she turned towards Glace. "Please," she said in a hoarse whisper, " I didn't know that they were this wounded. Whether you're a punisher or not, I don't care. You have to help me save them."

Something in Sterling's gut doubted that this was still a set-up. If it was, the lucario seemed genuinely worried that she killed her friends by attempting it. Glace gave her a look of pure distrust and loathing. "What are you talking about? You're the punisher scum, not us."

"Call me what you want, it doesn't mean much to me," she replied. "If either of them die... I..." She clutched the hawlucha tightly, trying to give him some warmth. "I might as well be nameless."

Even Glace let the comment go out into the wind, giving a respectful moment of peace to the mourning pokémon. "We have an extremely sick charmander with us, too," she told them. "He needs a warm place like them, or he'll die as well. I'll give you anything... money, treasure... my life, if that's what you really want. J-just..."

Sterling picked himself out of the snow and gave a more serious look at the charmander draped across the houndoom's back. His tail struggled weakly, and the sickeningly purple mark on his arm told Sterling that there was poison involved. "I see," he said cautiously, "that he is injured." The chaos clouding in his mind finally relaxed, and he found it easier to speak. "But who are they? Who are you?"

"I'm Lugum," she told them willingly. "The hawlucha is Grabbe, and the mudkip is Acker. The charmander on the houndoom's back is Bleak. We all come from Sunstarch village."

"And none of you are punishers?" It felt like a silly question - as if they would tell the truth if they were - but he deemed it necessary to hear her say it out loud.

"None of us except for the houndoom."

Glace gasped and moved away as the large pokémon moved closer to the group. Sterling finally felt the issue go out of bounds. No R&R division had ever heard of a defected the end, he adhered to the end-all Reconnaissance and Relay doctrine: _solve problems first, ask questions later._ "Where are the other punishers?"

The dark, husky voice of the houndoom somehow chilled him more than he already was. "Tried and executed. All but one."

If the dark tone implied as much menace as the braviary heard, then this one punisher had really slain the rest. "What? By what?"

"By me. The lucario and charmander assisted in the effort. I'll give you my title later, for we are only wasting precious time here."

What had seemed terrible at first became almost... fantastic. Extremely hostile towards punishers. Check. Capable of combat. Definitely. Ingenuous and good at improvising. They tricked Sterling, although he would be reluctant to admit that he offered his best on this mission. Research and Recruitment would have a field day with them if it turned out not to be a ruse. Ignoring that possibility, Sterling came to the only decision he saw fit: he would accept that lingering risk and bring back perhaps the greatest haul in R&R history. There could be no debate about it.

"Glace! You will help Lugum take the casualties back to base."

"What?! But this... this animal-"

"I don't care if she spat on you or kicked you! I want them brought back as soon as possible, and you two are more than likely the fastest in our group."

Glace gave Lugum a deathly glare. Yet their mutual goal of rescuing everyone finally won over her support. Or, at least, her assistance. "Fine, I'll help. There's still three bodies and only two of us, though. One of them will have to be late."

"Fear not, team, I am present and ready to lend my aid!" A luxio scrambled out from under the snow. He took in a deep breath of fresh air and ran over to pick up the charmander. "Do not cry, Lugum. I assure you that we'll bring them to safety - you have my word!"

The braviary wanted to speak, but rising embarrassment impeded him from opening his beak. "Is there," he finally said, "is there... any more of your group hiding under the snow?" If they mysterious gang had the intention to kill, both he and Glace would be dead. He of all pokémon in R&R, always the preacher of strict codes, should have treated the task seriously.

Even if it was just touring the Snowfields, he should have been watching. If Arceus hadn't been good, Sterling would have died and failed this critical task. He tried to blame it on the froslass, but couldn't find a good reason to do so.

Lugum quickly picked up Acker and stepped off of the tarp. "Sorry, that's all of us," she said quickly, "I wanted to be absolutely sure you wouldn't try anything. Let's go."

A poisoned charmander now on his back, the luxio ran to Lugum's side, giving Sterling's left wing a light tap on his way over. "Pristine wing-frame, friend," he commented. "Thank you for your hospitality." It took a lot to keep his embarrassment in check, but the braviary manged it with a drawn-out sigh.

Similarly shamed, Glace gave a frustrated grunt as she picked up the hawlucha and her satchel. Without a word, she dashed off in the direction of their base. That left the braviary with the strange, mountainous houndoom.

"Do I need to be bound and gagged?" He asked sincerely.

If Glace hadn't taken their satchel out of spite, he would have done so in a heartbeat. Sterling shook his head. "No... just stay where I can see you."

Something akin to amusement glittered in the punisher's eyes. "How is the Snowfield outfit during this time of year?"

Sterling did his best not to gape. R&R thought that their tiny Snowfields base avoided the all-seeing eyes of the punishers. A part of him twitched from the need to know more, and another feared what he would find. With his head bent down, he followed the sprinting pokémon, making sure to watch out for any more mounds of snow.

* * *

"L...Lugum? Hey..."

Going at full speed through the rolling expanse of snow and rock, Lugum barely noticed the mudkip wake up momentarily. His bright eyes stared up at the tall lucario. Her head bobbed and weaved as she jumped over rocks planted in the sheet of white fluff.

"Y...you're..."

"Taller?" Lugum finished. "I know, Acker. I evolved." The run had made her eyes dry, and only that saved her from crying.

Glace moved over and smacked her side with a free arm. "Quit talking to him, idiot. Do you want him to use up his strength and die?"

That froslass didn't like Lugum_, _the mudkip noticed through his frozen daze. But he had Grabbe. He was badly injured, but definitely better off than him._  
_

He felt like he was dying. The only explanation for the feeling had to be that he than anything, he felt tired. He'd be asleep soon, and his body knew it. After all that they went through, having their journey end likes this put a dull fury in his heart. The heat kept him alive as Lugum rushed him towards hope.

He wished that things had gone differently for them. No one pokémon was to blame for the tragedy inside Mount Steel, but Grabbe held less blame than anyone involved. Hope filled the emptying life in his body, his desire for Grabbe to live persuading his own body to do the same. He loved it here. He needed to go on even if Acker left an empty space in his life.

Lugum felt the weakened mudkip become limp in her arms. She couldn't stop running to check on him - she only prayed. "Come on, stay awake," she whined, quietly enough to avoid Glace's attention. "Acker, you'll be okay. I'm going to take you home, I promise."

_Take me... home? _

His legs kicked softly, their movement taken far out of his control.

_Are we... are we there yet? _

He looked at the blurry whiteness fly by him, and it reminded him of the pearly white stone of that place he once called home.

_"Come on, teacher!" _He heard. It was his own voice, worlds away. _"Aren't we there, yet? I'm so excited!"_

_"With time, Acker. Be patient, and you will see it soon."_

**Author's note: I am currently looking for a beta reader for this story. If you are interested, please send a private message. If not, I hoped that you enjoyed this chapter, and that it makes you want to read more.**

**Note, March 23rd:**

**I have no clue what happened, but a revision I made to this chapter turned out to be very wonky when put into effect. I've deleted the chapter, reformatted a new doc and uploaded that one. I apologize for anyone who thought there was a new chapter - there will be one tomorrow, I promise. **


	2. Prologue 2: Pleasantry

"Te-ee-acher," Acker groaned, "you walk like a lazy slugma!" Unable to resist his surging excitement, Acker attempted to smother it in the marble steps leading to the hypaethral.

The days in Pleasantry radiated with comfy warmness - the legendaries made sure it stayed that way. Nothing made the mudkip feel calmer, however, than contrasting that warmth to the cold stone. Maybe later, after he spoke to Arceus, he would ask his teacher why Pleasantry never had cold days. He loved the idea of it._  
_

As always, the ninetales had some explanation for his actions. "Acker, do you know why the hypaethral of Arceus is separated from the rest of Pleasantry?" There was a pedantic tone in his soft voice that tipped Acker off: he wasn't really supposed to know.

After making an hour walk into two, the ninetales had buried whatever that lesson was under excruciating boredom. "I don't know, Teacher Brazen." He gave his teacher a playful grin and rolled back onto his feet. "But I'd bet the entire Temporal Tower that you do!"

That won him one of Brazen's gentle chuckles. "Oh, Acker. It is placed here so that the servants of Arceus may use it responsibly. If it was located within the school, for example, then everyone would run to it every time they had a question. Sending a message directly to Arceus should be something you are very prepared for."

"Gah?!" All of Acker's confidence wilted. He told himself to breathe. That it was just fine if he didn't have any clue what to say to Arceus, that there was still time to put things together. Life in Pleasantry, of all things, would be easy to talk about. There were no large problems or rough curbs to blunder on - just news or pleasant news._  
_

His face locked in a determined grimace, Acker tried to make as much of his last few steps as possible. The fact that it was simple only meant that Brazen would expect him to do it perfectly. "I wish that you'd tell me that kind of stuff earlier."

"Now, Acker, we see who the _real_ slugma is." One by one, His teacher's tails tapped his head as their owner walked by. "Just have faith in yourself and everything will end well."

Having Brazen as a private tutor was so much better than his old teachers - he liked to play and make fun often. And with the ninetales matching him stride-for-stride, Acker felt like he could do anything. Even now, on the cusp of a thrilling new experience, his presence helped Acker somehow stave off his nervousness.

* * *

After a very drawn-out walk, Acker reached the summit of the large marble mountain on the outskirts of Pleasantry. The golden-colored stone at the top reflected the sun, giving it the impression of a holy place submerged in sunlight.

"Wow," he breathed, "it's the hi... hippy trail..."

"_Heh, pea, throll_," his teacher corrected. "Hypaethral." Acker could tell by how much respect Brazen gave the name that it was a very important place to him. "Arceus may be all-knowing, but he is not _all-doing_. For that reason, he created us his servants, pokémon made in his image. We are given safety and comfort in the hopes that we will use our independent minds to help him rule over the earthly realm with righteous power. Your choices, Acker, help shape the world."

Merely thinking of it stunned Acker. "My choices," he repeated in sheer awe, "shape... the world." Arceus entrusted the many pieces, that added up made the mudkip named Acker, with an amazing task. With that in mind, the mudkip nodded to the ninetales. "I'm ready. I would like to talk to Arceus."

Brazen nodded and stepped aside, allowing Acker to step towards the hypaethral. He walked through its golden arches and up the steps, towards the pond in its center. The ornate walls closed him in with their shade, and the fear he bit down began to rise again. It left him with shaky legs and watery eyes._._

"When you are ready," his teacher instructed, "lightly tap the pond with a paw. Tell him what you've done recently in your service. If you need a reminder of places in Pleasantry, just look beyond the fountain. You should be able to see every sphere from this vantage point."

Pleasantry, in order to promote efficiency, separated itself into three spheres. They sat in the midst of a giant sea of grass. Although the valley was large, Acker could still see where the valley ended and the sky began. Arceus and the other legendaries built the sky in Pleasantry in a way that reflected the earthly world's. Even so it was wonderful, every adult warned Acker of the real abyss lying at the end of the fields.

Seeing everything on such a small scale made him feel in charge of his life, empowering him to begin. He stroked a blue paw through the pure water. Suddenly, an alluring presence entered the open-roofed temple.

Although he trusted his teacher, the idea of talking to Arceus never seemed so real as when that powerful presence descended through the hypaethral's open roof. He instantly regretted his decision to touch the water. Was he already wasting time? Just by dallying, Acker wasted Arceus's time. What if time and space exploded while he waited? It was tearing Acker apart, so he tried to step away. But a few ripples caught his attention.

Prior teachings helped Acker understand what the pattern of ripples signified - thanks to Brazen, he had most of them down by heart. Judging by the delicate ripples, Acker determined that Arceus decided to give him time. He was doing other things, but the great Legendary lent him an ear, confident that he would find the strength to speak. To disappoint Arceus would be unforgivable._  
_

"H-hello, Arceus. M-m-my name is Acker..."

Since he was only ten years old, Acker spent a lot of time telling Arceus his time in the School-and-Home sphere. He expressed how happy it made him that Teacher Brazen selected him for personal tutoring. The elders in Pleasantry made wise suggestions as to where each child around his age should go. They decided to give him the special privilege of becoming a Guardian. Whiles others thought for Arceus, Acker would one day _fight_ for him in the earthly realm.

"And thank you," he added at the end, "if you had a part in selecting my sibling. Grabbe is so nice to me."

Then came the Working sphere. Grabbe, his assigned sibling, took him to the judgment office once as a part of his obligations. Inside, he spectated the passionate trial of a cubone in the post department. Caught in the act of stealing a fellow worker's mail, the cubone found himself accused of trying to undermine another's work. He was sentenced to reform A.

"It was a little scary," Acker admitted, "but I can see why it is necessary. Also, I really wish we could know why 'reform A' is less serious than 'reform B', but I know that this is intended as well. It would be nice to see the pokémon sent to reform B, though. Maybe if Grabbe could see his older sibling again, just once..." Brazen motioned politely for him to move on.

The only sphere remaining was the Action sphere and its large, grand buildings. Too young to fully understand each giant structure's purpose beyond their names, he couldn't do much other than express his excitement to eventually use them. It was the place of service, where every serving pokémon made use of devices that allowed them to alter the world. it was an incredibly precarious and cautious sphere.

"And I'll always remember," Acker recited, nearly bragging about his knowledge of the rules, "that if I don't have a reason to be near the Action sphere, then I need to _stay away!"_

Dialga alone worked with most of the intricacies of Temporal Tower, so he only commented on how tall it was, and how he wanted to be that high up one day. That comment left him completely out of things to talk about.

_Wow, _Acker thought as he ran his paw through the water, _I talked for a really long time! It didn't even seem like rambling to me, either. _

Ripples that pulsed inside of the clean basin of water would be the final judge. He watched it intensely, if only to stop himself from fainting. As they came out, the mudkip counted them. One ripple came, and then two more. The pond stopped moving, the pressure on his back lifted._  
_

The moment they did, Acker whipped his head back, a beaming smile on his face. "Brazen, I counted three ripples!"

Pride filled the ninetale's eyes. "Arceus is pleased by what he has heard from you, Acker. I am certain he has no reservations about our choice to make you a Guardian."

It was all too much - Acker had to let out all of his glee to someone besides his teacher. He couldn't imagine anyone better than Grabbe. "Are my lessons over for the day?" He asked hastily. "I have to tell Grabbe about this! He promised to wait at the bottom for me. Oh, he'll be so impressed when..."_  
_

Smiles fell flat for both the teacher and his pupil. "Acker, remember what I said about Grabbe?"

"Y-yeah."

"He's having a very difficult time right now. You need to recognize this and take how you spend time with him very seriously."

Acker remembered how Grabbe had begun to change the day his older sibling went off to trial. At first it was subtle, but the more imminent the reform B sentence seemed, the more he changed. "Are you saying that I give him guidance? I d-don't know, Teacher Brazen, he's my older sibling."

His teacher always understood him well. His many tails flicked in many directions, all of them curling sympathetically for the mudkip. "I know, Acker. I'm not saying you guide him... only that you give him a small push." In order to try and lighten up the mood, he offered one of his good chuckles. "Don't fret so, Acker; if I was perfect as a child, my Guardian name would've been something other than 'Brazen'."

Teacher Brazen always did stuff like this - he placed some pressure on the mudkip as a way to test his composure and poise. Talking up to an older sibling sounded crazy, but a Guardian should be able to do such things. Just thinking about that responsibility made Acker squirm. It was an unavoidable thing, he concluded. Acker ought to speak to the hawlucha before he did something foolish.

Stunned into silence, Acker waited for his teacher to finally excuse him.

"Class is over," Brazen said. His face no longer betrayed what he thought on the matter.

Not another second passed before Acker was running back down the stairs, to meet up with his endangered sibling.

* * *

A hawlucha leaned against the columns marking the temple's entrance. When he saw the mudkip running down the steps, he kicked off of the wall, bit into an apple and walked towards the valley, all in one panicked move. Bouncing down the steps, Acker could hardly see him shake off the remnants of a deeply set scowl.

"Hey, Grabbe!" Acker called after him, concerned, "what's the rush?"

Confused, Grabbe turned back and gave him an odd smile. "What? Nothing. How'd your chat with Arceus go?"

"Well," Acker told him jubilantly, "it was so much more than just a 'chat'! He really listened to me, and at the end the ripples communicated the he was very pleased."

Keeping his attention on the path ahead, Grabbe waved a wing distractedly at some picnicking elders. "Huh, don't know what you expected. Pleasantry loves you." The elders, a chansey and a xatu, set down their food and waved back. They called out happily to the pair.

"Hello, Acker, dear!"

"Pleasant weather for Pleasantry, right, Acker?"

Acker wanted to reply, but couldn't because he saw Grabbe's puzzled frown. Instead, he ignored the way the elders had ignored the hawlucha. All in part to his worsening mood, Grabbe had truly plummeted from the elders' favor with unprecedented speed. It rendered him invisible. The insistence of his teacher still rung inside of his head, giving him the urge to speak to Grabbe.

Seeing how Grabbe recovered gracefully and simply continued to wave his wing at the two gave Acker an excuse not to. Withstanding their rudeness, he kept his head held high and replied._  
_

"How goes it, stuck-up coots?!"

His heart skipped a beat and he tripped over his own legs. The smile on the older sibling's face seemed to convey warmness, yet the words that came from his beak were... _terrible._ Both in charge of powerful roles in several spheres, the two elders gasped in shock and scowled at the vulgar hawlucha. They could make life miserable for the poor pokémon with hardly any effort on their part.

Instincts told the mudkip to run over and beg for forgiveness, but a quick talon tripped him up, sending him face-first into the soft grass. "Relax, Acker. It's just some adult stuff - you're a bit too young to understand. When someone gives you something, you ought to return it. It's only right."

After a brief prayer to Arceus for strength, Acker dived into the uncomfortable subject. "Grabbe," he blurted out hastily, "you're not acting like yourself recently! It's very worrying!"

Using the sharp tip of his beak, Grabbe wordlessly put a slit into his apple. He wedged it right onto the fin on top of the mudkip's head. "Gah? Grabbe, get it off, get it off! Come on..." the added weight imbalanced him in inexplicable ways, causing him to stumble about in his attempts to remove it.

Luckily, Grabbe suddenly had a change of heart. He knocked the apple off of his younger sibling's head. They both watched as it rolled about in the grass. It was only half-eaten, but the owner had already started to walk away. Grabbe gave his younger sibling a blank look. "Yeah, so? Pokémon change, Acker. Maybe not as often as the seasons, but often enough."

"My friends say that they see you falling asleep in class every day, like you don't even care about the teachings anymore. Also you are getting into a ton of fights." All young pokémon were instructed in basic wrestling, which they needed for settling conflicts best solved without the use of words. Grabbe applied those lessons liberally, to the point where it honestly looked like Grabbe wanted to do more than pin his opponent down. He kicked and scraped, both against the rules.

Of course, as a Guardian, Acker had already received a more intense course on the art of combat. Whenever Grabbe got into a fight in front of the mudkip, he could see how desperately he wanted what his younger sibling had: a chance to fight.

A reserved sigh was the only answer, until he suddenly felt inspired to start talking in a hushed, excited tone.

"Acker, I'm sorry for being dishonest with you," he said. "The reason I've been out of sorts is because, well... I got to work in the Temporal Tower for a while."

Acker couldn't believe it. "Grabbe, you were always good at patterns and organization in school, but not _that _good."

"Wow, thanks for the compliment, Acker! That makes me feel all warm inside."

Acker rolled his eyes. "Most elders aren't even allowed to try to assist Dialga!"

His eyes shone with self-confidence. "Well you can drown yourself in the hypaethral's basin trying to confirm it with Arceus, if you want. I was up there, though, and I got to sort some of the scrambled instances in the time gears." Even so Acker didn't know the specifics, he knew the conclusion: "Acker, I got to see what the earthly world looks like."

Occasionally, Acker had seen the eagerness in the hawlucha's eyes before. When he tussled with classmates. When he looked at the Action sphere. When he gave the rude greeting to the elders, earlier. Acker admitted to himself that this, and nothing else, caused this problem. "Why... why would that make you so frustrated?"

The sunlight began to dim on Pleasantry. Soon, it would be nice and chilly, so that pokémon may fight off that cold with warm covers, and hopefully find a good night's sleep from the effort. Grabbe stopped walking and watched the images of starts dot the sky. A sad, lonely gaze took over him.

"Acker, I don't think you ought to be in Pleasantry. You're so rambunctious - in a good way. The children in the instances had parents... they could see further than a single field... and the snow, Acker. You deserve to see the snow."

He bit back his urge to tell the hawlucha about the elder's choice to make him a Guardian. It would ease his older sibling's desires while making him despise the mudkip. Losing a friendship built from years of bonding and trust over professions; Acker would never in a thousand years sacrifice that for an easy way out._  
_

The easier path now obstructed, he rooted through his head for a solution. "Uh, but Grabbe, you could, uh... oh! You can ask for a transfer to a Guardian job. Then you can see it all and tell me what it's like." Going out with Grabbe to defend Arceus would be so perfect. The sheer thought of it made him giddy. "Our teachers always told us that Arceus made us with the power to know where we belong in Pleasantry. Remember?"

Dreams of fighting alongside Grabbe faded with his scowl. What he muttered next was hardly audible."That's assuming you want to waste _your _life up here. Pleasantry's too boring for you, Acker, I promise. If I could give you just one chance..."

Calling elders 'old coots' was worthy of chastisement and a boring job in the Working sphere. What Grabbe had just said was a reform A worthy comment. Acker jumped in front of his friend, ready to argue, beg, do _anything_ that would make him take his words back. "Grabbe, that's really, really, _really_ not a good thing to say!" He looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot. "Take it back, please!"

"You're right," Grabbe admitted quickly. He too scanned the field around them for pokémon. Thankfully, the hypaethral was too far-off from the spheres for many pokémon to lounge near its marble heights.

But one pokémon other than the siblings and the elders had made the trip. "Would you care to say that again, Grabbe?" The hawlucha flipped around, his eyes filling with horror before he even saw the ninetales. "Grabbe, I certainly hope that you did not just slander Pleasantry. And in front of your younger sibling, nonetheless."

"N-no, Guardian Brazen, I think that you've misheard," Grabbe stammered. He wasn't afraid of the elders. Teacher Brazen was a Guardian, There existed no bureaucracy for the kind of punishment he'd give Grabbe. In Pleasantry's past, it wasn't unknown for Guardians to get rough with the pokémon they protected. "I promise that it isn't what you think." _  
_

"Maybe I did mishear," Brazen said. "When one is overhearing others, words often get lost in translation."

"E-exactly!" Grabbe started to save face with a halfhearted chuckle.

Any chuckles he managed were smothered by Brazen shoving him back with a light headbutt. The hawlucha shuddered and backed away. "I would like to tell you something directly, Grabbe. I want you to take in every word. It is important that you do."

The hawlucha hesitantly stepped forward. Acker's teacher leaned in close, until his nose was nearly poking Grabbe's head. He whispered something softly, practically breathing words into the hawlucha.

It hit the older sibling hard. His eyes widened and his claws clenched instinctively. His eyes darted back and forth between Brazen and Acker, until they finally rested on the smiling ninetales. All he could manage was a hoarse whisper. "_What?_"

"You heard me well, Grabbe. Have a nice afternoon. You too, Acker." He could tell that his teacher felt disappointed in him, and Acker averted his eyes as the Guardian walked by.

He turned to his older sibling. "Well," he asked, "what did he say to you?"

Whatever Brazen said, it had sucked the emotion out of Grabbe. All that fervor towards seeing the world faded like the sunlight. "It's not a big deal," he whispered. "Let's go home. I asked the supply department for some extra supplies - we'll be... we'll be eating like gods tonight, Acker."

Not quite understanding the shift, Acker remained quiet and followed his sibling home.

* * *

Tonight, not even a hearty meal and the chilly weather gave Acker a peaceful slumber. He tossed and turned, not able to comprehend what had happened between his teacher and Grabbe. Why hadn't Grabbe talked to him about Brazen's message? Acker asked that question over and over again. Why did the hawlucha avoid all of the delicious pastries he swindled from the supply department?

Somewhere in the middle of the night, he heard Grabbe get up. He heard soft sobs, and the clattering of talons on wooden floors. He probably went out clear his mind of whatever Brazen said to him. He would be back. Acker assured himself of that and resumed his struggling._  
_

And then, later on into the night, he heard a giant explosion. Nothing loud ever happened in Pleasantry outside of its celebrations, so hearing the crashing thunder of battle caused the mudkip to fly into a panic. "Grabbe?" He asked desperately, throwing himself under the table inside of their small house. "Grabbe, older sibling, I need your help! What was that noise? Grabbe, help me!"

Grabbe never came back home. He roamed out into the night, where the explosions were. Too scared to move, Acker closed his eyes and prayed to Arceus. "P-please, let him be okay." Agonizing seconds turned into tortuous minutes. More explosions shook his home, but no one came to help him. The house began to crack in several places.

"Acker?" A determined voice cried out, "Acker, are you in here?" The voice belonged to his teacher. Its calm demeanor drew Acker out from under the table like a pleasant smell. "Oh, thank Arceus you're okay. We're evacuating everyone from all the spheres and moving to the hypaethral."

"W-why?"

Brazen picked the mudkip up by the skin of his neck and planted him on his back. "There's no time to explain." Not wasting any more time, the teacher dashed out of his house and into the chilly night, student in tow.

Right before he left through the front door, however, Acker felt himself jerked down and crushed under Brazen's weight. As the supports of the house - not intended to resist the quaking outside - crumbled, Brazen was forced to tumble under the collapsing building. He recovered immediately and sprinted through the street, weaving through the crowds of panicked pokémon.

Up in the sky, Acker caught sight of the origin of all the chaos: the Temporal Tower, once a grand and almighty place, now cracked violently and sent shards of polished stone sailing towards the ground. Servants went to and from the tower, all scrambling for either a solution or safety. Both searches proved fruitless, and the inhabitants of Pleasantry tried to survive until a legendary fixed the problem.

By the time Acker regained any sense of his surroundings, they were are the edge of the sphere. "Brazen, why is Temporal Tower-"

"Acker, stay close!" A group of scared pokémon piled up around the ninetales and cowered away from the approaching debris. He bucked the mudkip off of his back and planted his paws on the ground.

Moving intricately, he produced the mark of Entei in the air with his flaming maw. Before the resulting shrapnel would pose a threat he released the fire blast, eviscerating the approaching rocks in its furious flames. He tumbled through the crowd, not caring if they got out of his way. As sharp shrapnel tried to slice through the crowd, he whipped his tails around and deflected them. "Stay close, everyone - do not move until I say!"

Scared half to death, Acker crouched low to the ground and waited by a crying zigzagoon. He knew him from school, from before his days with Brazen. The recognition in the zigzagoon's eyes relieved his panic. "We'll be okay, I promise." He tried to sound as confident as possible, like a true Guardian would be. "Guardian Brazen will protect us all."

"B-but," the zigzagoon argued, "what about Grabbe, though?"

Acker shook with terror. "W-what?"

"He left the circle! I asked him where he was going, and all he said was 'out of here'! He ran away... p-poor Grabbe..."

There was nothing left to hear; picking himself up, Acker broke out from the crowd and dashed towards the Action sphere.

With the goal of stopping Grabbe on his mind, debris nor explosions could scare him. He darted deftly around the crashing bits and pieces. "Grabbe_," _he willed silently, "in the name of Arceus, don't put yourself in harm's way."


	3. Prologue 3: Departure

Some of the homes inside of the School-and-Home sphere had little fire-places. Since the fair weather never ceased in Pleasantry, most pokémon saw them as another thing to dust off. Seeing the vibrant green fields separating the spheres go up in flames was both amazing to watch and terrible to be caught within.

_He has to be heading to the Action Sphere,_ Acker thought. If there existed a time in Pleasantry where the most crucial sphere became unguarded, it was right then. Afraid of getting too close to the trails of fire left by the Temporal Tower fragments, the mudkip walked through one step at a time.

In a way, he almost appreciated the frantic need to catch up to Grabbe - without it, he would probably break down and cry again, as he did in the house. Brazen definitely saved his life, because he didn't have an intention of leaving it before the ninetales had broke his way in.

_Now it's my turn._ He picked up his pace, showing less respect to the tingling sensation of the nearby fire. _I'll get to Grabbe before his life collapses. _"Grabbe?" Acker called out. The smoke made the mudkip winded and teary-eyed. "If you're out there, Grabbe, we need to talk about this!"

There was no response. Hearing his own voice only made Acker realize that he too was caught within the infernal field. The smoke could choke him, or he could eventually find himself trapped in a ring of fire.

Acker chose to keep his cool and move in the direction of the Action sphere. By the time the zigzagoon noticed Grabbe was gone, the hawlucha more than likely got a huge head-start. "Grabbe," he yelled desperately, "say something! Just a word and I'll know where you- _ah_!"

A giant boulder came falling towards the mudkip, its grand size casting a dark shadow over him. It was the largest chunk he had seen yet - an entire, arching structure that probably came from the top of the Temporal Tower. It was at least twice the size of his teacher.

Before Acker had the time to avoid it, the flaming rock struck the ground in front of him. The sheer force of the impact sent the light mudkip hurtling through a wall of flame that raged next to him. Smoke trailed from Acker's small body as he passed through the fire, the heat setting him alight and his speed setting him out. The world went horrifyingly dark as he smashed into one of the few apples trees found in the field.

He twitched helplessly, trying to make sense of the what had just happened as he laid smoldering in front of the tree.

* * *

_"Remember_," Brazen had told him once, _"that the first time you take a serious hit... you'll feel very sick. Your first urge might be to lay down and freeze. Or your body may do it for you. We call that shock. We all wish we could forfeit the moment we get dealt a bad blow, but in battle you have to force yourself to take deep breaths and fight on."_

Either he did it wrong, or Brazen lied. Acker wheezed the charred air in and out of his lungs. He tried to struggle back onto his feet, but his body wouldn't allow it yet. A sharp pain in his front right leg pinned him to the tree like a spike. "B-Brazen," he muttered, "i-i-it hurts..." the first encounter with serious pain left Acker afraid.

Funnily enough, it brought up thoughts of his future. All the grandeur of a Guardia's life buried itself under agony. Somewhere out there, Grabbe navigated a maze of fire, searching for that pain. Acker couldn't understand that, but he could understand that he still needed to find him.

And Arceus agreed. Acker craned his neck and saw the tiniest edge of blue - the hawlucha he went out to find was leaning against the tree he crashed into. With a determined grimace he rolled onto his stomach and faced Grabbe, who was already looking at him.

"Thank... thank Arceus," he moaned. "Grabbe, you need to listen to me..." he ducked his head down and breathed in deeply.

"Acker?" Grabbe asked. "What are you doing out here? Are you okay?"

His front leg screamed for his attention. It almost won it over each second. "I think... I think I broke my leg. I didn't catch myself on the tree properly, as I was taught..."

Even in the midst of furious danger, Acker couldn't bring himself to tell Grabbe about his future job. Grabbe let the thought trail away willingly. "Acker," he said in a hushed, hasty tone, "I don't think he has seen you yet. You need to try to run away-"

"Who's behind the tree, traitor?" Acker looked past Grabbe and saw the bisharp in front of them. "Is that... is that Acker? Why, up-and-at'em, huh? Good work pursuing this criminal! A true Guardian's intuition."

The luck only continued; Keen, an acting Guardian, had cornered the hawlucha. Brazen introduced him to many Guardians over his training, allowing his companions to educate the mudkip through good example. Shimmering blades turned the flickering orange fire into a red hue, and_ t_iny pangs of doubt ran through him at the sight. He subdued it, knowing that Brazen would never befriend a bad Guardian. Keen would understand the situation if he told him.

"Keen!" Acker called out, feigning more excitement than he felt. "Y-yeah, I apprehended the crimin... gah..."

Grabbe looked back at him. The betrayed bleakness set in his eyes told Acker everything. "You... what are you going on about, Acker? You're not a Guardian. You're not, right?" All Acker did was shake his head, but it was more than enough.

Anger dominated the hawlucha's better judgment. Furious, he launched himself off of the tree and spread out his wings threateningly. "Damn it. I want nothing to do with you, then! Go on, shoo, I don't need your help, l-l-liar!"

"You're going crazy... it's not like that older sibling."

"Don't _older sibling_ me! If I'm crazy, that makes this entire place sadistic!"

"This is your home," Acker argued weakly.

"Then why does it feel so lonely-"

Grabbe cried out as both tree and pokémon instantly received thin cuts. Wooden flakes and blood fell into the green grass. Wide-eyed, the hawlucha immediately sat back down and brought a shaky talon up to his sliced side. He froze at the sight of the dripping blood. "A-Acker," he muttered in shock, "you need to go."

Guardian Keen laughed heartily. "Quit sniveling, criminal. Watch this move again, child. you'll aspire to know it one day." He twisted the blades on his arms and with a screech shot them forward. Another line of crimson accompanied the other.

"Ugh," Keen grunted with disgust. "I had to hold back because you're there, Acker. Move aside so I can really show you some moves."

Temporal Tower fell. The fields of Pleasantry went up in flames. And now, the nightmare was complete. "H-he's... he's my older sibling!"

Keen chortled and inspected his arsenal of sharp tools. "Ever see a criminal's head hang halfway off to the side? It's much more... fulfilling than having a sibling."

It took all the effort he could muster to stay calm. Seconds after Grabbe warned him, the sadistic side of Pleasantry became a festering wound opened up by the tower. Grabbe wasn't the only one taking liberties during the panic. All it required was that single calamity. "Please. I'm begging you, I don't want that."

"This is the problem with the sibling system," Keen complained. "You've devoted yourself to your sibling instead of Arceus. Acker, come now, do you really think that letting him go will leave you alone in Pleasantry? You'll have replacements for him - replacements who are much more substantial and kind to you. So, little mudkip, _move aside._"

But he didn't want replacements. He wanted Grabbe, because that's his older sibling and one of two things that didn't crumble in his small world.

His front right leg threw his vision out of sorts with its pangs of agonizing pain. But Acker got up, regardless. He took his deep breaths. Step by step, he limped in front of the hawlucha, taking a quavery stand against the bisharp. Keen's cruel grin faltered. Like a monster found only in stories, that grin transformed into a terrible beast, spitting and snarling at the mudkip.

"_You traitor!" _Keen screamed. "I'll make sure to kill you both. Damn you, Acker, you had so much potential! You can't cower away from the right choice, now. Get out of the way - this is your last warning!"

"J-just move," Grabbe whispered from behind him. "It's my fault, not yours. Please, Acker. You can have a good life as a Guardian. Eventually you'll forget about me. All you have to do is move!"

Acker crouched down, ready to at least make an attempt at dodging an attack. The fires raging around them gave him inspiration, as if they lit something within him. "You... don't scare me," he told the bisharp. "And you," he said to Grabbe, "don't get to decide how much you're worth to me." He grimaced and mentally walked himself through the techniques Brazen taught him. "When it comes to leaving you or fighting Guardian Keen... you're worth giving it a try."

Keen readied his blades again. "Stupid kid. Do us all a favor: save your last prayers - Arceus has no time for traitors!" He drove his blades forward.

Now paying more attention, Acker could see the tiny white streaks approaching him. Giving it his all, he roared and threw himself down in a clumsy dodge. He knew even before his legs gave out that it wasn't enough. He closed his eyes and waited for more inevitable pain._  
_

Yet, somehow, the attack went harmlessly around both of them. A familiar chuckle accompanied the departing whistles of Keen's attack. "Now, now, Guardian Keen," Brazen said, stalking his way around the tree, "our teachers taught us to wrestle for a reason. This is the wrong way to express your anger."

The nintetales's entrance only amused the maniacal bisharp. "Being moderate in the name of Arceus is fine, Guardian Brazen, but sometimes the animal in us needs to watch something _bleed!" _Grabbe had warned him seconds ago, and already it reared its head: a sadistic killer in Pleasantry. He was supposed to trust the bisharp. Everyone did trust him, but all he fought for was blood. Judging by his teacher's reaction, he knew.

"I won't allow you to sate your thirst on my student, Keen. You're aware that I dislike you, right? If you fight me, I will personally see to it that you die." Acker had never heard such words from his teacher before. Their intent made Acker scared... and strangely curious.

"You want to betray the Guardians as well? Come at me!" Yet again, Keen sent out those cutting white lines, this time aimed at Acker's teacher.

He sidestepped the attack with a strange stagger and charged forward. Even as the bisharp readied his blades, Brazen kept his charge constant and strong, a light smile on his face. For every strike from those shimmering blades, a condescending laugh came from the ninetales, as if the enraged attacker was just a clown._  
_

"Listen to yourself!" Keen cried jubilantly. "You're enjoying this more than I am!"

The bisharp brought his blades down like an executioner, aiming for his opponent's neck. Brazen danced outside of the attack easily. When more followed, he skipped about those as well, his legs either giving way or tensing, based on exactly what purpose they needed to serve.

"No," the other Guardian replied after ducking a two-handed attack, "it's only policy. I like to keep it light-hearted - death is a _very_ _heavy_ subject, Keen."

"Smug dog. Choke on your laughs! Choke on them!"

One side of the fight seemed chaotic, while the other like a dance Brazen had prepared for the two young spectators. Keen was simply outclassed.

Finally, after a stumbling attempt to pile himself onto the other Guardian, Keen found himself on the defensive. A front paw cuffed his leg, causing him to stumble. Over and over the teacher spun, kicking out with his hind legs every rotation. The padded noises of deflected blows came first, but in seconds a constant drumming of _snaps_ and _cracks_ began. The barrage ended with a headbutt that sent Guardian Keen sprawling.

Although effective, it gave Keen ample room to prepare a technique. "Good display, Brazen, but you'll be left as helpless as the children!" Dark energies gathered quickly on the point of his right arm, yet Brazen only watched. He needed to move._  
_

"Watch out, Teacher Brazen," Acker cried out, "he's preparing something very strong!"

His teacher looked back and laughed as the dark streak came flying at his neck.

Multiple things happened at once. The first thing Acker noticed was that Brazen disappeared from his spot in front of the violent tide of dark energy. Then came the gurgling cough of a defeated bisharp, a bubbling gash across his back sending him to the ground. It ended with the comparably instant reappearance of his teacher. He stood gracefully with his back right leg kicked out, his tails rustling happily.

It was unbelievable. "Teacher Brazen," Acker said, in awe of his teacher, "you... you kicked him into his own attack." Guardian Keen laid on the floor, not moving. Acker had the feeling he would never sneer at or cut anyone ever again. "Is he... is he dead?"

Done with his fight, Guardian Brazen pulled back his leg. His smile went away as he walked towards Acker. He inspected the mudkip's broken leg before speaking. "I'm afraid so, Acker. Like Keen suggested, I made the choice that I considered right."

"L-letting me live is better?" Acker asked. "But Teacher B-Brazen... you're guilty of _murder_ now." Reality descended roughly on the young child. "They'll send you to reform B. I'll n-never see you again."

"It seems to be that way," he said sadly. The mudkip put his head down and cried into the grass. Walls of fire closed in on them, making Acker feel trapped. Soft, cool fur brushed against him - Brazen crouched down and gave him a gentle hug. "But it's okay," he explained, "because I know that you and Grabbe will have made your escape far before then."

_Grabbe... _Acker looked behind him, to where the angry hawlucha once sat. He was gone. "I-I lost him again!" Acker roared angrily. His good front paw stomped into the ground again and again, turning the blades of grass underneath into mushy spinach. "I d-don't know what to do anymore. E-everything is breaking down-"

"Acker, you must ensure that Grabbe stays safe."

Of all the directions Brazen might have placed him on, protecting Grabbe was a jolting surprise. "What? He's doing terrible things!"

"For centuries, there hasn't existed such a young, meager servant capable of handling the devices of the Legendaries alone. Arceus gave him the free reign to develop how he pleases, which he used to become who he is now - he may seem reckless, Acker, but he can become a genius with time. Whatever he may do with his capabilities, I would risk my life that those choices are right and towards the betterment of Pleasantry!"

Working wordlessly, Brazen bit off tufts of fur from one of his tails. He tied knots into the strands with his sharp teeth as he bit. Somehow, the end result was a beautiful white scarf, It was clumped in some places, but altogether amazing for how much time had spent on it. He wrapped it tightly around Acker's leg. "This is so you can catch up to him. So you'll remember me. He's most likely in the Bridge. That's the large yellow one with red decorations, remember?"

He knew what it looked like, but its purpose eluded him. _Brazen isn't absolutely sure Grabbe went that way._ _This__ isn't like before, _Acker thought dreadfully. Teacher Brazen had finally given him a real mission, a real goal. Even if it was their last time together, there was no dishonoring that trust. By Arceus, if Brazen trusted Grabbe, so would he.

He careened back and forth, trying to get used to walking with the makeshift cast. The fur was sturdy. It kept his leg in place as he stumbled towards an opening in the fire. Towards the Action sphere and away from his dear teacher.

Tears welled up in the ninetales eyes as he watched Acker precarious walk his way towards his destiny. "L-like watching an infant take their first steps," he said. He made a noise that was half chuckle and half sob. It was probably the last one Acker would hear. He took it in close and committed it to his closest memories.

"I love you Acker. May Arceus give you strength."

If he said something now, he would never be able to leave Brazen behind. So he limped on, keeping his deep sadness to himself.

* * *

Since he was unable to lift both paws to the door, Acker planted his face against the large, ornate doors of the Bridge and pushed. The moment the door cracked an inch, he was blown away by the sheer clamor contained inside. Grabbe ran from machine to machine, pulling levers and activating switches with an angry vengeance.

"This is it!" Grabbe yelled to himself. "Come on, Grabbe, faster!"

The strange structure in the center of the dome spun at amazing speeds. It soon reached a crescendo, a noise so loud Acker cringed. Desperate to beat some invisible time limit, Grabbe jumped from one balcony to another.

His wings flapped uselessly as he hit the ground in between, only barely missing the rotating circles in the center of the room. Slowly but surely, Acker saw the machine wind down again. Levers flipped back to their original spots. The switches turned their own settings back to off.

Frustrated, Grabbe screamed. _Clangs_ rung out from the metal ground as he threw a fit in the middle of the Bridge. Eventually, he curled up silently. Whatever Grabbe had in mind, he realized now that he was just barely unable to get it. It made the mudkip's aggravation settle. His older sibling seemed so hopeless, now. Acker took a deep breath and entered all the way into the room.

"Grabbe?"

The hawlucha's head snapped up instantly. "What... what do you want? Acker, I thought that running away would get it through your head, but I'm okay with you being a Guardian. It's no big deal. You get to the earthly world your way. Just leave me to my own methods, got it? Once I figure out how to hit the last switch in time, I'll finally be rid of this place. So save your preaching."

Grabbe was literally trying to get out. Not hide, but actually _escape_ to the earthly world. Acker wanted to protest, but his last moments with Guardian Brazen made the words catch in his throat.

It took much more effort than standing on a broken leg for Acker to respond differently. "If... if I help you start the machine, may I come with you?"

That earned him a quizzical glance. The lights behind the hawlucha's eyes turned on again. "Wait. Really?"

He tried to wrap his head around what he had just asked for. The earthly world, he knew nothing about, other than stories or conversations he managed to catch. They would get lost. The possibility of peril was too high. On the other hand, he had to ask himself: did the situation leaves anymore chances open? There would be a trial for Brazen and his student, the instant Acker was old enough to be tried. Both of them would never be Guardians for the rest of their lives...

After considering his horrible options, Acker nodded sickly.

Suddenly, the hawlucha's small, sad ball unfurled. Laughing gleefully, he sprinted over to the first lever. "Acker, I was afraid that being a Guardian only made you think that I am crazy. B-but... t-thank you for believing in me!"

As good as the gratitude made the mudkip feel, and as much as the chance to stay with Grabbe excited him, Acker knew that his mission played a large role in his choice. He watched the hawlucha flap about the room. Brazen said he was a genius. That didn't stop him from also being insane.

Distracted by his own part with the machine, Grabbe dismissively pointed a wing at the last button on a high-up balcony. "When I say 'go', you hit that button over there," he explained. "Don't be too scared, Acker; I think that I set the destination to a very safe place."

Acker limped up the stairs to the button. The Bridge was obviously intended for the operation of more than one pokémon. In fact, Acker bet that every switch had its own set of rules, which Grabbe somehow knew to follow to the letter. "Y-you_ think_? When did you learn to use this thing?"

Grabbe laughed some more. "This simple thing? It's easy, compared to the time gears - it's doing everything so damned fast that's the hard part! Even if it isn't safe on the other side, we've got you: a sort-of-trained Guardian! A real win-win." He threw both wings out dramatically as he reached the balcony parallel to Acker's. "Okay, Acker," he yelled over the same crescendo from earlier. "Hit it... now!"

He wondered if he would still earn three ripples at the hypaethral. Maybe not yet, but he would make it up somehow. With that in mind, he hopped up on the balcony's railing and bashed the button in.

Waves of new energy coursed through the dome in timely pulses. It resounded off of the yellow walls and back into the center. One by one, the waves formed a small, visible portal. Acker's stomach twisted nervously. "Good work, younger sibling. Now, uh... I don't know if we should walk through it or not... but I say we dive right in before it closes!

Acker stopped looking at the multicolored portal. He saw Grabbe's wings reaching out to him invitingly over the railing. "You really think we should just drop in?" He yelled over the crashing of the portal.

"Just to be safe!"

Safety crumbled down an hour ago, and one of its rafters almost killed him.

"Trust me and jump, Acker. I promise you won't regret leaving Pleasantry behind!"

Beyond the parts that involved bloodthirsty bisharp, he would.

"I'm assuming that we should stay calm, or it could go horribly wrong. Like getting separated. Or fused together..."

An actual mission. All the conviction he thought he'd feel never surfaced. Only a nauseous feeling.

"Hopefully we don't fall right through and break something!"

Grabbe was going to be a giant liability. Knowledgeable, but too hard to keep in one place.

"Just try to keep your broken paw lifted, just in case- wait, is that Guardian Brazen's fur? Gross!"

What alternative was there? Leaving Grabbe to fend for himself? Staying in Pleasantry and willingly take a punishment he didn't deserve? He refused to let his service to Arceus end before it even began. It was adventure, maybe even glory, if he only stayed true to the mission. He could do it.

"This will be a better life for us, Acker. In the earthly world, we won't be siblings. We'll be _brothers_!"

Acker hopped up another rung of the railing and pushed his stomach over the edge. "T-to brotherhood!" He yelled back.

Together, they slipped over the edge and fell into a brave new world.

**End of Prologue**

**Thank you for reading all the way through the prologue! Creating the perfect launching pad for a story that will hopefully be full of suspense, adventure and emotion challenged me. The right place to start eluded me for awhile, but this has a ~60% chance of being it! Below are some fun notes regarding my name/plot choices. If you have any comments, criticisms, questions or concerns, feel free to either review the story or P/M me!**

* * *

**Extra notes:**

**Pleasantry** is based upon a very scaled-down version of the Future World from PMD 2. If you search for the map of the place, you'll find the Temporal Tower in the Northwestern corner. Moving down would be the three spheres laid in the middle of the land's bulk, with the hypaethral ultimately found at the Southernmost point. Why the name Pleasantry? Because the social and inner aspects of the place are ultimately inconsequential compared to serving Arceus; their day-to-day lives is only a 'pleasantry' they share before they get down to business.

**Acker **as a word is defined as (so says the dictionary) "a visible current in a lake or river; a ripple on the surface of the water". I built the hypaethral's functionality around the idea of Acker's name.

**Grabbe** is pronounced as 'grab', a bit of wordplay which reflects his tactile intelligence. It is also a name that carries with it the qualities of efficiency and mechanical knowledge. It is a German surname, after all (did you know that BAC test devices made in Germany are rumored to never ever break? Irrelevant, but noteworthy).

**Why are the protagonists two otherwordly pokémon... who become worldly pokémon? **I'm not going to say that the idea is unique. This concept has, I bet, been done somehow and somewhere by someone else on FFnet. My main reason is, however, that I didn't like having to deal with the 'authoritative pressure' that comes with writing the archetypal human-turned-pokémon. To put it simply: I love chunsoft to death, but I wanted to have some part in creating experiences and scenes that are unique to my own ideas on the 'sentient pokémon' theme.


	4. Sunstarch 1: Awakening

**Part one: Sunstarch**

An abundance of sunlight fought to open the sleepy mudkip's eyes. Not one to give up good sleep easily, Acker rolled over, eyes sealed shut. The bright sun wrestled away his precious last moments of grogginess.

It was the smells around him, however, which finally roused him. The small breeze carried a new scent, which was strange yet enjoyable - an intriguing smell, one that didn't arise in Pleasantry. He wanted to remember something important, but his completely exhausted mind preoccupied itself with the smell. A smell that was sort of like the apple trees, but more concentrated._  
_

Besides the mysterious scent, Acker hadn't slept that well in weeks. He smiled and stretched his legs into the air and arched his back.

The moment he did, a dull pain caused him to fall back down to his side. "Ow," he hissed to himself. "Why is my leg so... gah..."_  
_

Everything hit him at once. Temporal Tower had exploded. Teacher Brazen battled and killed another Guardian. He told him to run away with Grabbe to the action sphere, where Grabbe pulled switch upon switch until a portal opened up and sucked them into...

Acker's eyes shot open to see the biggest collection of trees he had ever seen. Apple trees littered the fields in Pleasantry as a source of snacks for the busy pokémon. But now, the trees were just there to be there. It screamed _earthly world_ in every way. Panicked, Acker jumped up and ran in a wide circle, trying to put his back against anything other than the trees looming over him.

"Oh no, oh no-no-no, this can't really be happening." Grabbe had really accomplished what he set out to do; he used the Bridge to transport them away from Pleasantry. Away from home. "No," he begged, "please, oh no! No-"

A winged arm threw itself over his head, clamping his jaw shut. "Seriously," Grabbe whispered cautiously, "stop freaking out. Just relax, Acker - we made it in one piece!"

The hawlucha's reassuring smile stifled Acker's fit for a moment. The pearly white scarf wrapped around his hurt leg brought it back to a simmer. "T-Teacher Brazen... h-he..." Acker laid back down and cried into the soft fur.

"Okay, okay," Grabbe pleaded, "don't cry. Brazen has a very tenured position in the Guardians. Who do you think Arceus will listen to more: some loony elders, or a pokémon who put his life on the line for him?" It was a fairly good argument, one that made Acker's sobbing subside. Teary-faced and still dead-tired, Acker couldn't help but continue worrying.

"I'm really scared," he admitted. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"I've already started on figuring that out," Grabbe announced proudly. "I woke up a bit earlier than you - we ended up on a path, but I dragged us over here and waited until you came to."

He wiped his eyes on the scarf one more time and stood up hesitantly. "Did you see anything? Like, a sphere we could go to?"

"There's no spheres, here, Acker. Earthly pokémon live in places called 'villages' and 'cities'. I saw one way in the distance... about an hour's walk if we get started now.

"An hour just to get to this Village?" It took an hour to walk from the School-and-Home sphere to the hypaethral. "I'm too tired, Grabbe!" It was nearly a legitimate argument. Besides that, any kind of walking would put his leg out of sorts again.

"Not 'the' Village," Grabbe corrected. "_A _village. Maybe it'd be easier for you to see what I mean if you got left the forest - it's mindblowing!" He wrapped his arms around the mudkip and pulled him back up. Acker put weight on his front right paw curiously. He jerked his paw back up and frowned at the hawlucha. "Oh.. if you need help walking, you can lean on me."

Pushing his side onto Grabbe's made it slightly easier to walk. "Better?" He asked.

"Yeah. That's better." They stepped forward in order to test the set-up, which turned out work fairly well. Together, they left the small forest.

* * *

"W-what?" Acker gaped at the sheer length of the path that went to the village Grabbe spotted. The tiny buildings and plumes of smoke that came from them were but tiny, foggy shapes. The path itself bordered both the forest and a steep hill, which Acker had no intention of looking down. "Grabbe, the earthly world has to be at least three times the size of Pleasantry! I can't even see where the sky curves in!"

"That's because _this_ is the real sky," Grabbe replied happily. "And this isn't the entire earthly world, not at all. If we wanted to walk to the end of anywhere here, it could take us weeks. Or months, even!"

Like his mind, Acker's voice became overwhelm with confusion. "G-gah, that's really big, Grabbe." Acker thought of how ridiculous it all sounded - a single mudkip protecting another pokémon from a world a thousand times the size of his own. The news mortified him._  
_

The hawlucha enjoyed talking about the size of the earthly world, so much so that he hardly noticed how nauseous it made his sibling. "There's a place they call the ocean, too. Imagine if the entirety of Pleasantry became flooded... hey! You're a water type, and I can't recall you every getting to swim."

One half of the duo slowed the whole down with his hesitant steps. Acker knew about Suicune, whose spirit swam through lakes and oceans. But he always assumed that such things belonged to the realm of the Legendaries. "I've swam in the baths before..."

"Uh, Acker, the water in the baths back in Pleasantry went up to your _chest._ I'm talking about these oceans being as deep as the hypaethral's marble tower is tall." All of the terrifying information battered Acker into an overwhelmed daze. He swiveled uncomfortably, trying to replace his confusion with the dull pain in his leg.

"How do you know all of this, Grabbe?"

"Well, I used to work in the Hall of Context as a cleaner, remember?" In the Working Sphere, the Hall of Context helped those working in the Action Sphere understand what they were doing. Since those in school generally never went near the Action sphere, so too did they miss the valuable information on the earthly world. "I only eavesdropped at first, but I started sneaking my way into the book room after things winded down."

Acker cocked his head curiously. "But, Grabbe, our teacher always told us that they keep that room locked."

To answer, he brought up a sharp talon. He twisted it about a couple of times, proud of what he was implying. "_Click," _he told Acker. The single word explained exactly what the hawlucha did.

Understanding only made Acker feel worse. He leaned off of his sibling's side, his balance ruined. He caught sight of what laid at the bottom of the hill.

"Gah! G-Grabbe, that water... it's moving! It's not even traveling downhill... w-what? T-this place is too much for me!"Acker tripped and landed face-first into the ground. "It's too big, it's too mysterious, and it's too far away from home! G-Grabbe, take me home, _now!_"

"Acker, that's a creek. It's not going to jump up here and bite you!" The bright water shone clearly under the midday sun, revealing the beauty under its surface. Grabbe crossed his arms above his head, chuckling. "You're being too dramatic, Acker. Just take it in for what it is? Besides, do you even know what your name... means? Acker?"

Scared half to death by the idea of a creek, Acker had fainted with his face planted in the dirt. His face was stuck in a shocked expression. It was the same one he had used to react to the creek and every other horror he encountered within the last few minutes of walking.

Feeling unsure of himself, the hawlucha took a seat in the nearby grass and waited for something to happen.

* * *

Grabbe waited on the grassy ground on the side of the trail patiently. Something had to come by, even if he didn't know what that thing was. Carrying the mudkip with his talons would cut him, and dragging was out of the question because of the rocky road. So he bet whatever safety they had on whoever came walking along the road.

Although the obstruction wasn't permanent, it made the hawlucha angry that Acker had stopped him from seeing the village. "Thank you, Arceus," he muttered, "for choosing _him_ as a guardian." Even so he hid it well, Grabbe still felt cheated. Compared to Acker, he actually owned the _ambition_ to travel to the earthly world.

Not that ambition translated wholly to bravery. Every so often, while waiting near the trees, Grabbe heard a rustle or the _crack_ of a broken twig that sounded off. He searched for its source, yet there was never one to be found.

He tried his best to let it go, however, because it didn't matter anymore. And also because, in the distance, he saw a grey pokémon running his way. Hardly in earshot yet, it still barked and called out to him.

It was an earthly pokémon, approaching Grabbe faster than he could possibly think. They would be talking soon, and Grabbe had no idea how to act. He never accounted for the possible problems: a language barrier, no back-story, an earthly pokémon that could be hostile on sight. The paranoia became so bad, it had the hawlucha checking himself for an 'otherworldly' kind of scent.

The indiscernible gray shape took the form of a mightyena, tongue lolling as he ran towards his mark with reckless leaps and bounds. "Okay Grabbe, you've planned this out," he said, steeling up his courage. "Just let him do all the talking - you'll be fast enough to make up answers." He was also aware that lies stacked up, a fact that would only make it harder as time went on. "The mightyena is assuming you're just like him, so don't get defensive. J-just relax."

"Howdy, hawlucha!" The earthly pokémon barked excitedly. The hawlucha let out a sigh of relief. At least they spoke the same language, and the mightyena didn't tear out his throat. "I'll be there in a sec- whoa!"

After a bad trip over his own legs, the mightyena accidentally threw himself to the ground. He tumbled forward and bounced until all of his built-up speed faded from the repeated scrapes against the ground. Grabbe froze, not sure if should help or ask the mightyena if he was okay. His fur was mangy and disorganized, as if the mightyena never tripped his way into a body of water before.

Opposite of what the hawlucha expected, the fallen pokémon cackled loudly. "I'm such a klutz!" He roared gleefully, unable to help himself. Long black legs kicked out wildly, proving that their owner no longer had the intention of talking to the wayside hawlucha. Finally, though, he rolled back to his feet and gave Grabbe a wolfish grin. "How're you doing?"_  
_

Talking to a real life pokémon from the earthly world was intense. Grabbe smiled and waved, swept away by the experience.

"Uh, hello? I don't know if you have anything to be grinning about..."

It was intense enough to make him speechless. "What?!" He said, a little louder than he meant to. "I mean, uh, what do you mean?"

A paw poked into his side, reminding him of his cuts. "You've got nasty little cuts all over you, hawlucha. And your friend over there smells like you tried to cook him for dinner." He demonstrated how little respect earthly pokémon had for personal space by leaning in towards Grabbe. They were so close, every detail of the mightyena's eyes and folded ears became very clear. "Does that have something to do with the bright light a few hours ago?"

"B-bright light?" The damned Bridge had made their entrance into the world very obvious.

"Yeah, a sort of orange-ish, quivering light? Well, I'm 100 percent sure you're involved."

"100 percent?"

"Yeah. I'm the deputy of Sunstarch Village... so can you please tell me before my sheriff yells at me for being inefficient?" Grabbe sat there, dumbfounded. The deputy stamped his paws impatiently. "Hurry up!" He insisted.

Desperate to improvise any kind of answer, It couldn't be too hard to do so; the mightyena seemed willing to not scrutinize whatever he said. _  
_

Fire was something he was hardly ever exposed to in Pleasantry, until he witnessed the flames that ravaged the fields and destroyed the School-and-Home sphere. "Cabin fire," he answered hesitantly. "Our cabin... ignited. Acker - the mudkip over here - tried to put it out, but he was too slow. Got a bit of smoke in his lungs, and, well, ha... ha. You know?"

Content with the answer, the mightyena smiled. "Uh oh. How'd that happen?"

Grabbe wished that he could give himself a congratulatory pat on the back. He was managing a real conversation in the earthly world. Grabbe laughed and held out his wings. "Well, I was trying to air out my, er, bonfire. And one thing led to another... added a bit too much air, I guess. _Fwoosh._" Thanks to his reading, he at least knew how to lie decently.

"Well, you don't seem too upset about it," the mightyena replied, "so I won't get upset either. But..." the clumsy pokémon scratched his ear nervously. "You lived out in the forest, huh?" Grabbe nodded. "Have you... have you registered you and the 'kip yet?"

This was news to the hawlucha. What did 'registering' mean for them? What would they be signing up for?"No."

Still consumed by his nervousness, he laughed slowly. "Well what are you waiting for?! Go run over and sign up immediately!"

The hawlucha matched his laugh, unsure of where the conversation was going. "Okay, I'll make sure to."

At that, the mightyena stepped back and matted his ears to the back of his head. He seemed genuinely concerned. "I w-was just kidding," he explained in a hushed tone. "Look... the sheriff would have my skin if he heard me saying this in front of him, so listen up: we don't really mind in Sunstarch if you register or not. So if you're looking for a safe place for the little 'kip, feel free to just keep your head down and we'll vouch for you. We don't mind, like I said."

Whatever that meant, it made the hawlucha scared. No book in the Hall of Context warned him about registration, or a ghost of a reason why it would cause someone this carefree to become shaky_. _"I'll keep that in mind," he said. "Oh! And... if you don't mind, uh..."

"The name's Klots."

It was most likely just a strange nickname, but a name nonetheless. "Well, Klots, if you could help me get him into the village, I'd appreciate it."

Slightly more somber than before, Klots sniffed the mudkip before scooping him up onto his back. "He's just a little freaked out," Klots explained. "Happens to me all the time." Amused by that, he chuckled and walked over the other end of the path. "He just needs a bit of exposure to... his own element!"

Grabbe cried out as Klots tossed Acker over the edge of the hill and into the creek. "In Arceus's name!" The surprised hawlucha cursed and started to cautiously work his way down the hill. "What is your problem?"

The same cackle from earlier bubbled up again. "Just wait and see, pal! He's probably just upset because he's been covered up in soot."

"And what about his scarf? That scarf is important to him!"

"Oh, it'll dry."

It wasn't until Grabbe scooted himself halfway down the hill that he saw Acker surface. The mudkip laughed and experimented with his fins, testing his ability to resist the current. "Hey," he called out to his sibling. "I'm flying on the water, Grabbe! I'm floating!" He spotted Klots at the top of the hill, making him frown. But the mightyena couldn't be more right; Acker's mood was definitely improved by the water. "Who are you?"

Klots, his job done, turned towards Sunstarch Village. "Come on, 'kip. I'll walk you two to the village."

For most of the walk, Klots spent his time bragging about how nice Sunstarch village was. It was interesting to hear what earthly pokémon thought was valuable. He went from one spectrum of village life to another, praising everything from food to pokémon. As the buildings scattered at its front became larger, so did Grabbe's idea of what he needed to do.

Even Acker, once he dried off, seemed at least slightly invested in finding out more. Grabbe somehow kept his own curiosity shut tight behind his beak, allowing the mudkip to adapt to the earthly world.

Soon, they could even hear the clamor of village life. "Wow, everyone's so animated." Acker said.

"Well, the rain will be falling soon, so everyone's in a scramble," Klots replied. "Ergh, I hate the rain. Everyone says I end up smelling like wet dog... like I don't notice. Like I care - haha!"

Acker leaned in close to his sibling. "Wait, rain is the droplets that come down from the real sky, right?"

"Yes," Grabbe whispered back. "In part, the creek had a current because of the rain."

"Let's go back to swim in the creek. It was really fun."

Falling into the water improved Acker's mood more than any talk could. "Sure, when we get settled down."

"Oh - and why did the mightyena call himself a 'dog'? Isn't that an animal-"

"Hey, what are you two whispering about?" Klots asked.

Grabbed waved it off quickly. "Oh, just our plans - whether or not we want to stay here."

The mightyena nodded. "Yup. It can be hard to find a good place to settle these days. You get a good cabin in the woods, all alone... and _fwoosh_. I feel you, pal."

It puzzled Grabbe at first, but then he realized why Klots kept calling him 'pal'. "Oh, my name is Grabbe, and this is my sib..." he gave the mudkip a confident smile and patted his head. "He's my brother, Acker"

For some reason, that made Klots somber. "Oh. But not by blood, right?"

Grabbe cursed under his breath. He didn't know a lot about the subject, since neither of them had actual parents. The fact was obvious, however, that Acker and Grabbe laid on two very different sides; where he had colorful feathers, Acker had slightly damp, blue skin. "It's a long story," he suggested. "A-anyway, we're allowed to build a home in the village and live in it, right?"

Klots shook his head. "That's too dangerous. When they come around, they'll know that somebody knew is living in the village. And they'll force you to register."

Although knowing what _they _and _registered_ entailed was important to Grabbe, he also knew that it would make Klots suspicious if he asked.

It was Acker who brought it up. "Wait, registered? What's that? Where does that happen?"

"So you never told him?" Klots asked Grabbe. "I'd do the same, in your position. See, there's this building... actually, we're in front of it, now." With all the talk, Grabbe hardly noticed that they had entered the village.

Compared to any other building located inside its center, the registration office seemed to hold a lot of authority due to its tall, stone structure. It was also just slightly separated from the village's bulk, making it obvious that it was associated with much more than Sunstarch. Klots clenched his eyes shut and stuck his tongue out at the place. "Yucky place, okay? Bad. Really bad."

That authority contained within the stony walls made Acker's eyes open wide with recognition. Grabbe knew that finding an adult to order them around was priority number one to the mudkip. It came from far too much time following around Brazen's footsteps.

"Grabbe," Acker said anxiously. "let's go register!"

Even so Klots had just met the mudkip, he immediately shook his head. "No! Uh, you see, 'kip, you and your brother don't need to. We're giving you... special privileges. Yeah! So there's no need to worry about it."

Since Acker suggested it, Grabbe forced himself to look past Klots's fear of the place. That registration office had something to do with Pleasantry, he was sure - perhaps it kept track of everyone in the earthly world. If they signed their names, they'd be perfectly distanced from Pleasantry - close enough to get back, far enough to never get tried. He clapped his talons together, a wave of good ideas flowing into him.

With this office, they could test out the earthly world without getting stuck there. If they did end up hating it here (although he doubted it), they simply used the earthly world as a hideout while things in Pleasantry calmed down. And then, it was a matter of following whoever took the names back to someone who will help them get home. It was too good to be true.

"Uh, sorry Klots," he said, tingling with content. "I think that it's only right for us to sign up. An obligation, you know?"

A sheer look of confused horror contorted the mightyena's face. "B-but he's only ten! Why aren't you taking the free pass? I'm basically saying you don't have to!" Unable to reply properly, Grabbe simply took Acker and walked towards the stone office. "This is really bad, Grabbe. Think about what will happen the next time they raffle Sunstarch. Then you won't be so focused on what's 'right'!"

"I appreciate your concern, but I know what I'm doing." Several other earthly pokémon eyed them from deeper inside the village, giving the hawlucha unsettling looks.

"No, you don't," Klots growled. "Idiot. Please, reconsider or keep the 'kip out of it, at least. He doesn't owe anything to them!"

"Thank you for your concern," Grabbe said again, this time more annoyed. "But let me tell you again: I know what I'm-"

_Bang. _Once second he had been arguing with an annoying mightyena, and the next he was sprawled out on the dirt. Little clouds drifted up from where he had skidded along the ground. The gall of earthly pokémon amazed him; Grabbe said no, so they switched right to abuse. He put his feet under him, ready to get up and tussle with Klots. "Hey," he yelled angrily, "what do you think you're... eh?"

Instead of the mightyena, Grabbe found himself face to face with an unkempt riolu. Her fur was like Klots's own. Grabbe could tell, however, that the unstable, frayed look of the riolu somehow reflected her own lack of stability. Something violent, passionate and sincerely crazy raged on in her battle-ready stance. She behaved exactly like something out of a nightmare Acker would dream up. It certainly scared him.

And in her eyes, Grabbe saw something incredibly strange. They were bright red, and held a sort of unbridled fervor he had never seen in Pleasantry. Not even from the fight he caught a glimpse of between Keen and Brazen. Whatever reason she had for pushing him, she really meant it. Something about that determination locked him to the ground.

Apparently, such a thing was commonplace in Sunstarch. Klots sighed a breath of relief. "Lugum... please don't hit the new guests in our village." He said it with a hint of appreciation, as if he hoped to see more._  
_

"Some deputy you turned out to be," Grabbe muttered. It made him feel oddly bad to insult the helpful mightyena, but anger was a far better motivator.

In reply, the riolu flailed her arms in front of the hawlucha. Both siblings yelped and stepped back. "Bird brain, pond scum, You're both very stupid, and I dislike you both intensely! Come on and fight me!"

By that time, Grabbe was also curious to know what this meant. Would an earthly pokémon really act like this? She was mad, but not convincingly furious on a second glance. At least, she didn't sound very convinced that she thought that they were stupid_. _"Uh, I think I'm fine," he tried cautiously, "Why did you-"

Lugum headbutted the hawlucha, sending him sprawling back to the ground. Now that made Grabbe really angry. "Okay," he roared, "just remember that you asked for it!" He jumped onto the riolu against Acker's objections. If Lugum's push came to shove, Acker the Guardian-in-training would jump on her in a second. _  
_

She had was quick paws. Lugum caught the wing approaching her face. With a simple spin, she made the hawlucha's wings send him gliding hard into the ground. "Yeah, you like that, bird brain? Come and get me!" She turned tail and left, running around the registration office towards a beaten path that led into a small field.

"Grabbe, please don't chase her - she's a total maniac," Acker begged. "Let Klots handle it."

Instead, Grabbe got up and sprinted after the riolu; with a new feeling akin to both curiosity and rage, he went far beyond reasoning.


	5. Sunstarch 2: Strange Custody

With an outstretched claw and a cry of rising frustration, Grabbe swiped recklessly in an attempt to grab the riolu's leg. For a split second her ruffled blue leg seemed to be within his grasp. Yet that same split moment also saw her suddenly fly forward several inches, forcing the hawlucha into the ground with nothing to show for nearly ten minutes of painful effort.

And, like the other times, the riolu spun around and taunted him. "Haha…" She tried to laugh while panting and ended up wheezing. "You're a pretty fast runner. I mean, it can't be easy for such a lazy loser to run so fast." Loser, stupid and lame; the riolu's repertoire of insults didn't go far beyond those subjects. If she had to put in an effort equal to Grabbe's running into her insults, she would die.

The first few times she escaped by mere inches, he had beat his claws into the dirt. But now, after every single attempt somehow failed, he could hardly stand up. In fact, between the hunger and exhaustion bearing down upon him, Grabbe felt terrible. Winged arms struggled to carry their owner back up for more running. A pain similar to catching a boulder stopped that quickly. Excitement had carried him through most of the day, but that energy ran out right then.

Now he knew why the Guardians, according to Acker, feasted before heading out through that portal. Everything that composed them - their bodies, feelings and whatever allowed them to move - successfully traversed the portal. But all the real fatigue and hunger came on a delay, hitting them at an incredibly bad moment. It was a wild guess, but at that point Grabbe desperately wanted some explanation.

"Oh, come on," Lugum groaned. "You've tried _so_ hard to get me; I'll give you a _whole ten_ seconds to get back onto your feet." Willing to take the offer, Grabbe went for round two on getting up. But he had eaten nothing for one day, stayed awake for two and bled throughout most of it. When combined, it simply was too much. When the offer proved unsuccessful, the riolu laughed nervously and bargained with herself. "Uh, thirty seconds - final offer!"

"I don't get it," he grunted. For some reason, he found himself unable to hold back his thoughts, as if the exercise had forced the words from his mouth. "Every time I get close to this riolu, she somehow gets away by _this_ much. " Suddenly, he spat out the dust in his mouth and looked up. "She's tricking us, Acker. She's leading us somewhere."

An instant moment of clarity struck him like a slap across the face. "I've been running you around the village, actually," Lugum bragged. "I wanted to have a good talk with you, in my cabin. Let me tell you about it, because it's really smart. So I first said to myself: how would I do this without getting in trouble... oh, I know! What if I-_"_

"Can you be shut up for a second?" Grabbe snapped. Suddenly, the hawlucha plucked himself from the ground and walked towards the riolu. Just when he ran out of reasons to stay awake, another one arose from a queue of consequences he incurred during the past few days. "Where did you put Acker? Why didn't he respond?"

Lugum, previously complacent, backed away quickly and tried to figure out why the hawlucha was standing again. "Hey," she said, "it's okay. He stopped a while ago - can't you see him behind you, loser?" She put a strong foot forward and pointed at him, but he already had his back turned towards Acker, who was tumbled over near their original path. "Now get back on the ground and sleep it off, or else I'll put you down there."

"I need to get him out. I need to take him away from here." Even he knew that it didn't make a lot of sense, but dread was a very good impediment to wise decisions.

"You're older, so I'm taking you back first. I put a lot of effort into doing this - I followed you _all_ the way back from Proxima Forest, for crying out loud!" She shoved him, but he stood strong, fighting against his urge to lay down. "Oh come on," Lugum whined, "this is a really big personal victory for me. Can you _please_ just go down? I get it, you're durable, I'm sorry I called you weak-"

"Sun. T-that's _the _sun, and you just let him lie down under it?" It was a real sun, unlike Pleasantry's fake dome that sealed off the abyss. A sun that provided light... a sun that provided _heat. _And for a pokémon like Acker, whose skin was normally damp and cool, fainting under the actual sun without supervision meant a prolonged death by heat exhaustion.

It took the riolu a second to process this. When she did, she too began to panic. "Oh, damn it!" She lifted her paws up to her mouth and clamped down on them. A halfhearted strike from the furious but tired hawlucha flew over her head as she moved past him for a better look. "My plan _really_ blows. I'm so sorry, this is my fault."

Grabbe prodded her weakly with his claw. "You ran us around, two victims of a cabin fire, with smoke in their... _our _chests, no food, no water, no sleep... of course it's your fault!"

"I know, I know," Lugum said, "but I promise that he'll be fine." He flinched away as Lugum's dirtied paws came to rest on his shoulders, but couldn't get out of her long reach. "I promise you, Grabbe, that everything will be okay if you just come with me to my cabin. I know how to treat him... and his leg, too."

"Yeah, fix the leg _you_ worsened by making us run around. No. I"m not going to any cabin you own. I hope you rot for this, savage creature!" A dull pang of entertainment coursed through his tired body. Underneath all of the panic, getting tricked was sort of... _fun._

He started to turn when the paws on his shoulders tightened considerably. "I didn't 'make' you run anywhere, Grabbe. That's all on you. And... and that last comment really hurt. I was going to pull back a bit, but I've changed my mind."

"Pull back what?"

"My right hook."

A large, blindingly large paw flew away from the hawlucha's shoulder into a tightened windup, ready to pummel its target. Already pushed past his limit, all Grabbe could do was widen his eyes as Lugum's paw pummeled him back into the dirt and into unconsciousness.

* * *

The next time Grabbe awoke was also his first time inspecting the home of an eathly pokémon. As he came to on a makeshift pile of old hay, his blurry vision managed to catch a glimpse of Lugum washing off Acker in a small bucket. Sibling instincts kicked in immediately, demanding that some kind of action be taken before she drowned him.

But carrying out that action would be useless without a plan behind it. Squinting through his remaining stupor and working through a splitting headache, Grabbe made a plan to incapacitate the riolu. The first thing he spotted was the metal planted in both of her arms - that gave him an advantage if he pushed her into the bucket full of water. Yet that wouldn't work out well because Acker was in there, and he desperately needed the treatment. Grabbe considered though, the off-chance that he was nearly recovered, and asked himself if it was a good enough chance to risk ruining Acker's-

Suddenly, the hawlucha found his chest heaving with the beginnings of a laughing fit. The dull fun he had yesterday remained, and he somehow found it increasing with every passing second.

Just an indeterminate amount of days ago, Grabbe rotted away in a boring school, learning about such things like organizing mail, or contacting someone in the action sphere without going there, or knowing that Arceus's love extended itself to each and every student. Now, just by traveling to the earthly world, the dull life of a servant hawlucha had taken wing, transforming beautifully into a new, marvelous lifestyle. One that involved kidnapping, fights, and enough peril to go around.

He wasn't Grabbe the worker, not anymore. He now became Grabbe the hostage, and he found that freedom - or lack thereof - to be such a beautiful thing. Besides that, he had somehow instinctively adopted the behavior of a kidnapped pokémon, with all of the planned escapes, fear and indignant feelings in tow. Being an earthly pokémon was so simple, even so he never thought of being one before.

The waves of euphoria washing through him were stifled slightly by a foot prodding his head. With a kindled spirit pushing him, he launched up into a sitting position and shook off his dizziness. When the riolu gave him an odd look, he returned the favor with an equally strange smile which made her relent slightly.

"Uh..." Lugum wanted to boss him around, but the smile had disarmed her. Out of every emotion, glee probably didn't make the riolu's list of expected reactions. "How long have you been looking at me like... like _that_?"

"Hours," he lied tauntingly. That really put the kidnapper off of whatever game she hatched up while stalking them.

"Just... just lying in the hay, smiling at me?"

"Yup." Lugum averted her eyes in an attempt to shrug off that discomforting grin, and the hawlucha saw his chance. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my brother and I have other places to be."

He grunted and shot himself up into her chest. The top of his head knocked the wind out of Lugum, yet she managed to stumble backwards, arms wrapped around the hawlucha's head. Since he had been down for a long time, the room spun unnaturally as they drifted towards the hard wooden floor.

Unluckily for the riolu, Grabbe managed to land right on top of her as they collided with the ground. He ran quickly towards Acker, ready to scoop him up for a daring escape. He threw his arms over the side of the bucket to assist the mudkip, in case he was still feeling sick and needed the extra help. "Acker, come on, we're leaving!"

Instead of moving towards him, Acker backed into the opposite side of his small bath. "No."

"Huh?" Lugum's head hit the wood fairly hard in their quick fight, but she was already up and stumbling towards him. They didn't have the time for games, so he leaned further over the edge and tried to forcefully remove him from the tub. He proved to be too slippery to grab, especially when he wiggled and tugged away from his older sibling. "Acker, what are you doing?"

"Lugum doesn't want to hurt us," he explained. "She gave me water and fed me, which is more than anything you've done since we- hey!"

Grabbe looked down at his legs only to see a stooped riolu steal them away. "You... _are not excused!__" _She roared and dipped him head first into the bucket of water.

Instantly, the submerged bird heard his sibling protest loudly while pushing him back up, but Lugum seemed adamant on keeping him exactly where he was. Having never been submerged before, Grabbe flailed about in a painful panic, trying his best not to breathe in the water. After a long half-minute of yelling and struggling, he was only focused on resisting his body's wishes, which tempted him to do exactly that. The way that his chest felt on fire made a very persuasive argument. One that began to be considerable, especially as it donned on Grabbe that she probably wasn't going to let him back up for air.

Just before he sucked the water in, however, Lugum flipped him around and sent him crashing into the other side of the bucket. He gasped in the dusty cabin air thankfully and cowered away from the abusive kidnapper. Maybe, just maybe, such a confrontational solution wasn't very fitting, considering his situation. So he scooted against the wall and shrugged away.

Apparently, she too started to have some second thoughts on her own aggression. "Whoa." She leaned over the side of the bucket with a profound look on her face. "That was super intense. I really wanted to hurt you..." apparently the enraged attempt to drown him warranted a hearty chuckle.

"Really?" Grabbe spat out the mixture of insults and water that filled his mouth the best he could. "Funny you should mention that, because my brother said that you didn't want to hurt us, 'Lugum'." The mudkip scowled at him, not liking the remark.

Lugum looked around her dingy room, baffled. "Hey, how do you know my name?"

Although childish, the act of crossing his arms and looking away made Grabbe feel good. "That's really mature," she said, frustrated. "You get your head shoved under the water for a bit and you devolve into a pretty child - no offense, Acker."

"None taken." Grabbe wanted to reprimand his sibling, but his attention became torn between the mudkip and the riolu who was currently sidling over the edge of the tub. He raised his wings to cover his eyes from the splashing water. With three pokémon in the tub, the water rose well above above its brim, sending the extra water gushing out onto the floor.

"There," Lugum told him. "Now we're all soaked in the bath. Are we even?"

"Nearly drown yourself," he replied, "and then we'll see where that takes us."

He meant it as a bitter joke, but the riolu actually listened. Her chest puffed up with inhaled air as she prepared to dive under the water. "Alright, you big baby, if that's what it takes." Acker gave him a curious glance, hopeful that Grabbe could shed some light on what was going on. They both watched silently as she went under, eyes closed and body focused.

Inexplicably, Grabbe suddenly shot forward with his claws wrapped around her arms, lifting her over the surface. "K-klots said your name," he muttered, not completely sure if that was what he wanted to do. "That's how I know it."

A wordless nod acted as the only reply as she shook herself off. Honestly, Grabbe simply felt guilty. He had basically commanded their kidnapper to drown in bathwater just to gain his trust.

Leaned back with a gleeful smile. "Ta-da! See how I managed to do that without pouting afterwards?" All the overflowing water finally rested on the floor, leaving the cabin silent. "If you're wondering, I know your name because I followed you back from Proxima Forest," she tacked on afterwards. "I saw you leaving the clearing, and I was curious."

Blabbering on the trail about Pleasantry was an idiotic move. He needed to distract her from that. "A better word for that is _stalking. _Why are you stalking us?"

After a quick scan around the cabin,"I know what you two are."

Grabbe went breathless, even so he was above the water. Trying to be inconspicuous, he put an arm near Acker, who gave him a worried look. "What... do you mean?"

"You're both runaways. I go on a run every day by that forest. What are the odds that I've never seen you? Plus, you're kind of bad at lying."

He couldn't breathe in nor breathe out. There was no possible way someone like Lugum could have known, yet there it was - not even a week in and already discovered. Acker took over for his sibling, who tried to wrap his head around it.

"Lugum, please," he begged. "Grabbe and I are in a lot of trouble there, if you tell on us we'll be tried-"

"It's okay," she whispered back. "I'm a runaway too."

"Thank Arceus!" Yelled a very relieved hawlucha. "That, uh, we have something in common. With our kidnapper." Lugum nodded excitedly.

"Where did you run from? West? East? What's... _Pleasantry?_" Either he risked her knowing that Pleasantry wasn't a village, or he gave her a real place. Places had names, names that he didn't know, so kept his mouth shut.

"Hey," Acker said, coming in with the save, "does that mean you two can get along, now?" Finally tired of sitting in chilly water, Lugum climbed out and stretched. The water only made her frazzled fur worse.

She clapped her paws together, enjoying the conversation. "No way, buddy." The news displeased the mudkip, but not nearly as much as Lugum plucking him from the water did. All it would take was one good kick, and the apprentice Guardian could put her into a world of pain. "I'm sorry, little guy," she cooed. "You're lucky, Grabbe, to have such a cute traveling companion!"

The way he shifted his eyes and squirmed only doomed him to cuteness. "Please let me go," he asked politely. "I don't like being carried."

That earned him a giddy squeal. "But if I didn't have you out of the tub, I couldn't do... _this!"_ With a good push from her leg, she sent the bath and the hawlucha still inside flowing out onto the floor. A barely-restrained chuckle from the mudkip only made things worse.

_ "_Klots didn't believe anything you said - you _do_ know that, right? And for whatever reason you have for trying to register again, you've spooked him."

In terms of the hawlucha's patience, it was drying faster than he was. "Why should we care? The moment you turn your back, we'll be signing our names-"

"What is your problem?" Lugum set down Acker and growled menacingly. Just like Klots, she too became angry at the mere mention of the subject. "Here's how things will happen if you try that: Klots will catch you and he'll kick you out of Sunstarch because he doesn't want that trouble in his paws."

"There are other places, I bet."

"And you sign up, the punishers find out and come here to get you. You got away from one punishment, why are you jumping into another?

At first registration was something neutral, maybe even positive. The moment Lugum uttered that word, _punisher_, he knew that something was seriously wrong. He quickly forgot about winning the argument - he needed the information that Klots refused to give them. "Who are the punishers?"

"Is this all a big _joke_ to you?" The moment she adopted a shrill, incredulous pitch, Grabbe knew that things weren't going to end well.

Lugum picked him up and slammed him into a small wooden cabinet behind him. The water made the wood slippery, causing Lugum to push extra hard to keep him pinned against it. "I ought to turn you in into them and let you find out, for endangering that poor mudkip!" She pulled him off of the cabinet only to slam back into it. A long wooden crack shot through the shoddy thing. "Maybe you'll get a decent one, that will take you all the way back home to fulfill your punishment!"

Another jarring strike against the cabinet knocked the wind out of them. "Or a lazy one, that would rather kill you than walk that far!"

The two sides of the small compartment split open, sending splinters raining down the floor. "A-Acker" Grabbe gasped, wondering why his sibling hadn't stopped the enraged riolu.

"Or an angry one... an angry one that will seem fine, b-but break your legs before you go in-"

"He h-has memory loss!" Acker shouted finally. The riolu snorted furiously and turned back to look at him. "We were being followed from the other side of Proxima Forest by a punisher, a nasty heatmor. I broke my leg in a bad fall earlier so we couldn't run fast enough and Grabbe was forced to cover me from an fire attack - it made everything quake and ignite."

The indignant snarls and bared teeth of the riolu went away gradually. That excused him from knowing about the punishers and prevented further beating, but neither of them were in the clear just yet. "And what about all that crazy talk, about Pleasantry - with all of that 'Hall of Context' stuff?"

To Grabbe's surprise, Acker answered that question confidently - or, confidently contained within the guide of a scared mudkip with an amnesic older sibling. "I-it's a fairy tale his mom used to tell us, about this magical happy island where nothing goes wrong. I d-don't know why he started talking about it, b-but he really believes that it exists. He thinks that registering will take us there!"

Lugum probably wanted to ask why Acker suggested that they register, when he kept going. "I played along with it the best I could. I even pretended to faint just so I wouldn't reveal myself. Grabbe, I can't keep p-pretending, because you're really hurt and I'm scared!"

The hawlucha jumped at the chance to stop the abuse. "No, Acker, it does exist! If we go to the offices we can get back there, I promise. Now take out her legs and get us out of here!" The irony made it hard to keep a straight face. Thankfully, when one's back breaks through a cabinet, it becomes easy to act pained.

They sold the act well; Lugum gave him a sympathetic look.

Then she slammed him into the wood still remaining on the compartment. "My bad... I get a little too violent sometimes." The paws around his neck released and plunged into the cabinet, returning with a jingling bag. Grabbe dizzily stumbled into a painful stupor. "That's one more for good measure. Now Acker," she told the mudkip, "if he tries to take you anywhere, yell for Klots."

"I understand."

The cabin turned out to be a shed, while the sunny weather he was knocked out in turned to a light drizzle. Klots wasn't lying about the rain.

Just before the riolu left them both alone, she flipped around tauntingly. "Oh, would you look at that," she jeered.

"What?" Grabbe asked.

"You're still here."

Even after learning of his amnesia, Lugum still didn't like him. Unable to change that stance at the time, he closed his eyes for a well-deserved rest.


	6. Sunstarch 3: Looking for Trouble

Grabbe couldn't express in words how tired he was of being knocked out. When Acker finally nudged him again, too impatient to let the older sibling sleep any longer, both his head and his back throbbed with a pain he never felt before. Everything hurt now, far more than the slices he received from Keen, and Acker gave him another concerned nudge.

A simple prod made his sides tense up and shake. "Lugum's out in the village begging for money," he said. The idea obviously confused him. "Apparently you 'buy' stuff with 'money'. Oh, and you're a total mess."

"Y-yeah, that riolu really did a number on me." With a determined grimace, he pushed his back against the wall and slid up. "Who would've known that earthly pokémon loved violence so much?"

The younger sibling turned around quickly in an attempt to hide his frown. "That's not what I'm talking about. You lied to me!"

"Lied to you?" He asked. "How in the world did I do that?"

"You promised me that there was a plan. You lied to me!" Unable to say otherwise, the older sibling looked down guiltily. "I had to cover for you. I had to _lie _to her, after s-she trusted me. I pretended to be sick until you could wake up, but you didn't do anything to help!"

Since Acker was obsessed with the values of the Guardians, forcing him into a living a lie would tear apart his conscience faster than anything else. It broke the vows he swore to uphold. "I did have a plan, Acker. But then came the registering, the punishers, everything that I couldn't possibly account for. And that riolu, _Lugum.._. How am I supposed to do anything about that?"

The mudkip bent his head and started to sob. Out of everything, it was the last thing Grabbe wanted to see. "I gave up everything in Pleasantry for you. Now I can't even be a good Guardian. A-Arceus hates me now." Tears dropped down onto the water-stained wood, leaving no impression other than the sadness pressing down on them both. "What about the Temporal Tower, Grabbe? I thought that you wouldn't leave it crumbling like that while our friends scrambled to find shelter - at least, not if everything was under control. You lied about that, too!"

"Time is perfectly fine," he argued, jumping onto the first thing he could at least answer.

He shook his head. "That's not true... l-look at this: when did Lugum knock you out?"

"An hour ago. No, wait..."

That was his immediate response, and it felt absolutely right. Until a second passed by - then he wasn't too sure, and a startling confusion too over. "A week. No, two days." Suddenly his chest seized up, making the hawlucha cry out and flail around. It was as if his instincts caught on to something first, causing everything to go wonky before he had the chance to rationalize.

Then it passed as quickly as it came. "About three days... ago?" Somehow he knew that was the right answer - he inherently felt that event wedged between two real events in time. "Whoa, that's not good."

Acker only sobbed harder after proving his point. "Lugum panicked in the same way, when she tried to tell me about it. And when she went into the village this morning, she came back telling me about doubles of stuff. And then... one would just disappear with an explanation. When they tried to talk about it, they freaked out. I can't believe I let you take me away during-"

"We're fine!" Grabbe cried out happily. "If Dialga is... well, _Dialga_, they've fixed everything already." At the mudkip's confounded look, he only laughed harder, too amazed to do anything else for a few moments. Clarity washed over him as he put the meager pieces he had together. "No, Acker, they didn't repair the tower. Uh, do you remember how I worked with the time gears?"

"...Yes?"

"Well, Dialga had to remove it in order to bring it down low enough, for me to touch. So if the Temporal Tower, which connects the gears to the earthly world and translates time, what would they do?" Before Acker attempted his own answer, Grabbe supplied it excitedly: "move them over here! Just, uh, just place all of the gears in the earthly world and we don't need a tower. It's not safe, I guess, but it works - or is working, since everything corrected itself."

It was as if he was doing magic. Acker shook off his surprise and tears. "But what about the falling pieces? They kept coming down and destroying our homes, the fields were in flames... is everyone safe?"

That took a bit of time, but Grabbe's profound squint didn't last very long. "Palkia bends Pleasantry's fake atmosphere down low to the ground. The tower gets eaten up by the abyss while the Guardians clean up the rest. Problem solved." Hearing those relieving words wooed the young Guardian out of his sadness. He still cried, but there was a light smile on his face, happy that the home he left would still be there for them.

Not willing to pass up the chance to make things up with him, Grabbe stooped down and patted him comfortingly. "W-what the heck?" He sobbed. "I don't get it, I just don't. How do you know all of this? Are you lying to me again?"

"No, Acker, of course not. Now if I can figure all of that out, I'll figure out how to get us out of this mess, too. Plus," he added, "I'll figure out how you can serve Arceus from here. So if you can keep strong and maintain the amnesia story - good work on that, by the way - then I will devote my time to getting you a good gig around here."

"I want to fight punishers," Acker told him reluctantly. "They sound like a bad lot, what with the leg-breaking and killing. No one deserves a broken leg. I bet they're like Keen."

On the outside he nodded, but inside he prayed to every legendary he could that it didn't come to that. "Sure, buddy."

He shook his head. "No, Grabbe, don't just say you will. I want you to go out with Lugum and search for them. Today."

He cursed under his breath. They wouldn't be allowed to go together, and Lugum would never put the mudkip out of her sight. It was up to him. "Y-yeah, good idea. Build up the riolu's trust so I can get alone and find out about registering-"

"_Registering?"_ The large shed door flung open violently, revealing a frustrated Lugum, ready to get to another round of pound-the-hawlucha. "Oh, I told you what would happen if you tried to convince him! Time to see if I can't knock some sense back into you!"

Grabbe threw up his arms defensively. "Whoa, wait. I was going to say, er..." he spotted the pouch tied around her side and an absence of medicine. It still had a weight to it. If money worked the way he thought it did, she either didn't buy anything or couldn't afford the medicine. "Register for a job. I can't allow this generous..." no matter how hard he wanted to, trying to call their treatment _hospitality _made him gag. "It isn't right for you to go broke providing for two torn-up runaways."

Suddenly, a welcoming grin ruined her intimidating demeanor. An anxious paw patted her meager pouch of money. "Uh, thanks! What jobs can you do?"

He managed a smile of his own. "I can do maintenance work. Give me something to fix and I'll get us paid."

Guardian's vow, somewhere in the third stave: _one should do good for goodness's sake_. Everyone knew about the vows. It was one of the only dreams most of the students in Pleasantry had: working for the Guardians. Acker would never trust him again after all of his infractions against the staves - all forty of them. Unless he discovered a punisher for him to fight, he'd do something riskier. Whatever these punishers were, it'd need be a weak one.

"Ooh! Okay, maybe if we hurry, we can make it before the actual worker does," Lugum said, mostly to herself. Working against an unexplained time limit, she kicked open a trunk in the corner and pulled out a beaten leather satchel. And from the satchel came a length of sturdy rope. It had, of all dreadful things, a loop ready to be fitted around his neck - the makings of a leash.

"Arceus," he said under his breath. "W-when did she make that?"

"A day in," Acker whispered back. "You'll be fine. She's really nice to everyone that isn't you."

Before he could object, Lugum put the collar around him. "There's no way you're walking me into the village like this," he hoped out loud.

"I know. It's so you don't run on the way there." Disregarding how badly the rope must chafe, Lugum tugged him towards her, like a captured prisoner. "Now let's see what you can do, bird-brain."

* * *

No one in Pleasantry chose to intentionally talk about it, but almost all of Pleasantry's food supply consisted of synthetic foods. The idea of making bread from the strange wheat plantation shocked him. Somehow, grounding the stuff in the right way supposedly made flour, a step Pleasantry's cooks never needed to worry about. It was cool to see the rain drip off of them. Another nice thing the cold rain did was relieve the pain of a chafed neck. Rope leashes weren't fun at all.

The instant Klots found them on their way into the village, luckily, he barked at them. He was unhappy with what he saw. But the mightyena was definitely right; the chilly rain really did make the deputy smell like a wet dog, giving them both a far better warning of his approach. "What are you doing?!" He called out to them as he came close. "Lugum, you can't walk him around like a slave, even if there's a risk that he'll run."

Grabbe tried to look around the mightyena, into the collection of buildings just in front of him. A real village, although filled with murderous punishers, excited him greatly. Seeing his anxiety, the riolu helpfully pulled him back from his distracted leaning. "Sheesh, Klots, you really need to work on taking regular baths. The rain's supposed to hide scent, not bring it out!" Something seemed off in her lighthearted taunt. Something akin to a different level of conversation, that Grabbe didn't have the experience to see.

"Yeah, bite me," he growled. "If Acksel sees this, he'll blame me for letting you enslave him."

"All he does is glare and mutter."

"But it gets _worse_ when there's a reason behind it." Too impatient to get an invitation, Klots took matters into his own paws and bit through the rope. His sharp white teeth flashes in front of Grabbe as he tore it to pieces. "I'm sorry," he said to Grabbe, "I didn't know about the amnesia. Has she hurt you at all?"

"Knocked me out, nearly drowned me, Slammed me into a cabinet until it exploded into tiny little pieces, And, if it's a big deal to you... there was some name-calling that hurt my feelings."

The three of them froze under the rain, letting the words sink in like the droplets falling into the mud.

Then, Klots began to howl with laughter. "Looks like you didn't forget how to have a little fun, huh?"

Before he could clarify, Lugum put him into a playful headlock. "Quit talking," she threatened behind a nervous chuckle. "Darn it, Klots, a few more days and I'd have him rolling over and fetching a stick. I mean, if Acksel has you chasing pokémon down, why can't I have a pet with its own tricks?"

Klots stopped laughing, his smile gone. "Whatever. The rain might pick up any minute now, so do your business in the village and get back to your shed." He took a few steps towards the fields of wheat, then stopped. "Oops. I meant _cabin_." It appeared to Grabbe that the violent riolu didn't tussle with every pokémon who stepped on her toes. Instead she watched him leave, a regretful smile seeing him off.

Without the rope around his neck, he could finally breathe easily. "Wow, what'd you do to make him that upset?"

"He's a punisher in training," Lugum explained. "I'm not about to let him forget about that, even if he did convince Acksel to ignore all of the runaways that pass through here. Willingly joining the punishers... I hate him. I hate everything about him. I'd kill him the first chance I got, but he's too strong. For now."

He didn't particularly hate Klots, but there was a certain mudkip that probably was strong enough. A Guardian had forty staves for ethics and a thousand for fighting. It was an interrupted training, but Acker probably had a good chance of victory.

But not murder. Letting Acker injure the mightyena would only give Lugum a chance to finish the job. Thus, Klots was off-limits for Acker's crusade. "Are you serious?" Grabbe asked, appalled. "What is going on around here? I need to know- I mean, remember. Because this definitely isn't Pleasantry."

It was useless to wipe her eyes, but she did it anyway. "Pleasantry doesn't exist, Grabbe. Every time someone's found something good, the raffle comes around. And we're all reminded each and every day that we could be dragged into a punishment. Then it's gone. The funniest thing is... he gets paid more for spreading that terror than we do for suffering through it."

He remembered seeing that unbridled passion in her eyes, just a few days ago. And he'd never forget how quickly it was crushed. Grabbe tried to rest a claw on her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"Get off of me!" She snapped. Grabbe withdrew on command - the pet joke wasn't too far of a stretch. "You want to make me happy? Come with me and fix Tarota's loom."

Liberated from his chafing leash, Grabbe kept pace with the brisk riolu. Between the rain, the buildings he passed by and the occasional laugh or murmur, Grabbe's patience spread itself dreadfully thin. "Tarota?" He repeated, not exactly caring. Their stone hurts were far inferior to the comfortable homes in Pleasantry. Some of then couldn't even keep the rain out, their tattered roofs hardly adequate for the weather. Forgetting about the loom, Grabbe wanted to fix the _entire_dingy village of Sunstarch.

Until that judgmental, absent look earned him a paw across the face. "Seriously? You don't even remember where you came from, and you want to give Sunstarch that look? Trust me, everything looks better when the rain stops, because everyone comes out."

Grabbe rubbed his head. "Noted."

"Oh! There's Tarota, over there. See the butterfree?" After getting through that first cluster of dreary stone houses, a few shops helped the place look lively. Outside of one, with a wooden decoration - a bolt of fabric rolling towards the sun (and slightly dripping off of the sloppy sign) - was an impatient butterfree. She scanned the empty paths around her for someone. The rain made it too heavy for her to fly, so Tarota perched on the loom underneath a small cover.

The loom towered over them all with its monstrous size and complexity. Bars, panels and knobs covered every part of its front in a disorderly fashion. If anything went wrong in moving those pieces, Grabbe would either maim himself or break it completely.

"Arceus help me," he muttered. "I could fall inside and get lost, it's so big. What was I thinking?"

As they came closer, Grabbe saw that a work in progress was stuck in the loom. One half had become beautiful fabric, but the yarn on the other side waited patiently in its unfinished state. He hadn't seen many looms before, but it didn't look to be too terrible of a problem. At least, compared to theorizing how one should go about solving a crisis in time.

Stifled wails came from inside the shop, but he ignored them. "Rushed a project of yours, huh?" Judging from his pushing on the machine's parts, he somehow felt that something had gone too fast. "This, er... hopefully won't take long."

"Excuse me, Lugum, but what is your friend here doing?" Tarota asked indignantly. "I have a worker from Oranwreath who will be here in - oh, young one, please don't touch it anymore! Please, Lugum, call him off."

"It's okay, Tarota," Lugum said. The soothing voice hardly matched her appearance. "Before Grabbe had to run away, he said that he helped repair things."

"Dear," Tarota warned, "I hope that this isn't a scheme. My poor daughter is getting nasty chills."

Grabbe nearly got declawed by the convoluted machine. Cloaks and scarves need to be really lucrative in Sunstarch to warrant something this heavy. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said, minding how he moved his claws. "What's making her ill?"

"Oh, it isn't curable. The love of her life was taken into a punishment not a week ago... my little girl is dying of heartbreak."

Another reason added itself to Grabbe's list, _reasons to avoid punishers. _The cries inside intensified for a few seconds, and he nearly had another accident due to its heartrending pitch. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I wanted to make her a blanket, but the loom started to jam a minute ago."

The hawlucha turned to face her. "This thing needs at least two pokémon to operate it, right?" He also couldn't imagine how the body structure of a butterfree worked with the giant thing.

The butterfree shook herself off. "Sorry, dear, it was fourteen years ago. Wait. Five days... ah! Someone help me! Something is w-wrong!" Tarota screeched and nearly flew into the rain, but Lugum caught her. A good, long moment brought her back. "It stopped working three days ago. Hm... does anyone else feel strange?"

Seeing the paradox happen to others was sort of entertaining, in a demented sort of way. Better than that though was the feeling of success, because the problem turned out to have an easy fix. "Hey, Lugum, do you have some cloth I could use?"

"Y-yeah, sure!" And out came a pearly white scarf made of ninetales fur. She took one look at it and winced. "Shoot."

"You _stole_ my brother's scarf? That's very important to him!" It hadn't occurred to him that an abusive, unstable kidnapper like Lugum could find the time to steal as well. With all the baths Acker needed to recuperate from the heat exhaustion, there was ample time to simply stow it away.

She sighed and wrapped it around her neck. "But I look really good in it. Besides I'm going to return it the instant we get back."

The business of two runaways was unimportant to Tarota. A dirt rag fell into his open claws. Grabbe clenched the rag and let go of his issue with Acker's scarf. Maybe Acker would finally regard the riolu in a new light.

"Thank you." He quickly tied it around the second bar of three, where the yarn would soon become a nice blanket for a devastated daughter. Using one claw to tug on the rag and the other to operate the bar, he jimmied them both until something clicked in a way that pleased him enough to stop. His job hopefully finished, he stepped back from the monstrosity and motioned to its owner.

"Whoever worked with you ruined the sync, since you were going so fast. I'm, er, not experienced with this kind of loom. Grab your assistant so we can test..."

A high-pitched hum entered his head as the butterfree landed on the perch in front of the loom. Without making physical contact, Tartota began to operate both sides of the machine with nothing but willpower. Earthly pokémon somehow knew techniques reserved for Guardians. He was well aware of his own affinities - flying and fighting - but never before did he put them to use, or knew how to. Now a common tailor wasted psychic powers on a _loom._ Lugum patted him on the back for a job well done, but he wanted more. He wanted to use techniques, to harness the power apparently inside of him.

"This is so embarrassing," she admitted. "I ought to know how to fix my own things."

Enamored by the display, he stepped forward. "Teach me how to do that. Please!"

Fixing the machine definitely improved Tarota's disposition towards the hawlucha. But not enough to consider that request. "Dear, I would love to, but it's a trade secret. Perhaps," she added temptingly, "the bag of poké I have inside will suffice as payment." Lugum cheered silently while Tarota grabbed the money. This pouch, unlike Lugum's, was weighed down with separately colored coins. It was a waterfall of browns, silvers and golds as Lugum accepted payment for him.

Everything went perfectly, until the two turned to leave. "Take care, Grabbe, and stay out of the rain!" The tailor called after them. "It's great to finally have a useful runaway move into town!"

Lugum faltered slightly in her giddy skip away from the shop. The skip became an urgent walk, which was hard to follow evenly. That last part deserved the empty look and its reaction. Tarota probably didn't intend for it to be such a cutting remark.

And then it was gone - back to smiles. Lugum waved back to the butterfree, who was already busy finishing that blanket. And then she muttered something. Grabbe couldn't clearly hear every word, but it sounded something like:

"See you later, you stuck up coot."

Before that struck him hard, Lugum patted his sore shoulders. "I know a good butchery near town square. You'll get a treat for fixing that loom, my little pet, I promise. Now pick up the pace. I'm hungry!" It was a halfhearted try to push him around, but more compelling than the other times, for some reason.

* * *

Meat. Another thing that Pleasantry stayed far, far away from. Carnivorous pokémon worked in all offices, but they didn't eat livestock or - Arceus forbid - other pokémon. They ate replacements with meat-like qualities. They tasted terrible. Teachers described real meat, though, as a hunk of flesh. A bloody, frightening ordeal for anyone. Grabbe never had the chance to fear many things in life. In fact, he could get it down to three main fears: reform A, reform B, and meat.

So by dumb, blind chance Lugum managed to hit that last fear perfectly. She handed a piece of something's leg, for the first part. And for the second, Lugum called it chicken. A primitive form of bird. A primitive form of _him. _It was like seeing his own body skinned, the bones broken down for marrow and the muscles torn away as he slowly spun on a rotisserie. The rain that fell into the wrapping around the chicken proved the part about the blood, a light pink telling him way more than he ever needed to know. And to finish the image, Lugum tore into her own piece ravenously.

He politely returned it and ran off to puke.

Getting the smell and sight away from him, however, degraded his nausea into a few heavy gags. The gags shrunk into heaves that slowed down and became coughs. He knew that it was a good idea to stay outside while she bough the legs, or else it would have been bad for everyone inside.

"You're squeamish around meat, huh?" Lugum laughed and leaned against the wall next to him. "Why wouldn't you say so? Now I've wasted perfectly good money, you bird-brain." Unable to do more than breathe heavily and nod. Surprisingly enough, the riolu realized that patting his shoulders only caused pain. She rubbed his back. "Good work with the loom, by the way. I know that I didn't deserve it."

"Thanks for the compliment, but... you took care of me while I was down, right?"

"I made some nasty porridge out of some bread and water. If you were awake you'd have gagged at that too."

He took the riolu's paw and held it with both claws. "We're even to..."

Life in Sunstarch was on the eve of improving considerably. Yet they were about to get much worse, now. Grabbe didn't really know if it was possible, but the small alley he ducked into in order to puke became covered with a shadow. A shadow that captured the darkness already present in the alleyway.

"Are you okay?" The darkness looming above him asked. The voice's booming quality would give him a headache, if he was exposed to it long enough.

He heard Lugum kick off of the wall and dash away from the monstrosity behind him. "Grabbe, don't say a word."

A giant paw slammed down next to him. It was a houndoom's leg. Whatever they fed this shadow caused it to grow to unnatural proportions. He wheeled around and scurried away, not willing to be near the intrusive beast of a pokémon. "Speak to me, or I will oversee your registration."

It was, to Grabbe's best guess, Acksel. The real punisher. Acker's spine would be trampled into dust within seconds if he provoked a fight. "And you aren't going to do that, now?" Lugum asked for him. "Whatever you do, don't speak to him. Run!"

Never before had a command seemed so inviting. Grabbe flung himself around and started to flee from the punisher.

Suddenly, something planted itself on his head. The houndoom really wanted him to talk. He proved this by wrapping his giant canines around the hawlucha's head, threatening the safety of his skull - maybe even his head's attachment to his body. "To my best knowledge, you burned to death in Proxima forest," Acksel growled. "I see no reason to kill you again, nor register you. Stay where you are - you are not what we came for."

Persuasion lost hard to coercion, opening Grabbe's mouth like an unlocked door. "W-why is your jaw around my head?"

Soft _thuds _bounced off of the houndoom's flank - Lugum's futile attempt to beat down the punisher. Grabbe racked his brains for the _why_ of the sudden crisis. From what he knew of registration, of the raffle, its ensuing punishments... if it wasn't him, it was Lugum. And there wasn't a better way to get her to run into an alley than threaten one of her first friends in a long time. All it took was this corrupt sheriff's deputy blocking the other direction, and there'd be no escape.

"Lugum," he said in a shaky whimper, "you're registered?"

"How do you know that?!" She asked. But Klots finally jumped into position. Maybe he actually learned how to fight in his punisher training. More likely, as Grabbe watched now, it developed their sense of callousness. The mightyena failed terribly, so shaken up by sobbing that it made escape an easy prospect.

"I'm so sorry, Lugum! I don't want to, b-b-but there's nothing else we can do for you - o-o-other punishers are watching." He laid down and buried his face in the wet ground, trembling violently.

But the fact still stood: Lugum, after all of her warnings against punishments, had registered to it. The almost-friends looked at each other, blank expressions on both sides. "Where?" Lugum finally croaked out. After that came calm, steady breaths. She had prepared a composure for this exact situation.

"Proxima Forest Punishment. The declaration was delayed, but it arrived with the roaming punishers. If you run now, you will jeopardize the other unregistered pokémon. They will raze the village in search of your two friends and any other refugees."

After having the houndoom's scentless breath pushing into his neck, the rain felt icy as that giant jaw lifted. Acksel's left ear twitched. "They are coming from your end, Grabbe. You need to leave through the other end. Hide in the shed. Do not so much as look outside until Klots tells you that they are gone." The hawlucha remained motionless. "Go!"

He pushed by the houndoom easily, but making it by Lugum wasn't so easy. The riolu gripped his arm, squeezing it to the breaking point. She wiped her eyes and started to take of Acker's white scarf. "I think that this belongs to you."

Grabbe pushed it into her neck and hugged her, bringing his mouth close to her ear without tipping off the punishers. After meeting someone as passionately violent as Lugum, he wouldn't risk never finding that again. The kidnapping, the beating, the yelling... it was the earthly world he hoped for, that made him feel alive. He had a chance to stop this and a trained mudkip willing to do it.

"Keep the scarf," he whispered.

"Why?"

"Because I plan on getting it later."

**End of Part One**

**I'd like to say sorry for the gap in time between the prologue and part one. I am in a transitioning phase in regards to this story, from something I was thinking about doing to something I AM doing. There are quite a few impediments to regular update, which bums me out, but I'll try my best to post chapters as soon as possible. Knowing what I'm doing right helps me, so if you're feeling helpful send me a review or a PM.**

* * *

**Extra Notes:**

**I've actually forgotten exactly where 'Lugum' came from_,_**But I remember that it stems from 'request' in Latvian - because, as is hopefully evident, she is the fairly demanding type. In the thirteenth century, Latvia was conquered by the Germans, which is why the punisher in charge of Sunstarch, Acksel, has a German-sounding name.

**But Acksel is actually Norwegian and means, 'man of peace'**. Likely because the last thing he wants - or anyone wants from him - is a fight.

**Sunstarch **is so named because the place gets a lot of sun - except in rain season, where the village's name is definitely a disappointment.

**The nickname Klots **is supposed to express his self-deprecation and guilt. The word 'klutz' takes it root from the word.

**Pleasantry is filled with vegetarians that are overly concerned with the 'earthly world'.** They aren't based on hippies though, I promise :).


	7. Proxima Forest 1: Entry

**Part Two: Proxima Forest**

"I can't believe I vouched for her! Stupid thief!"

Acker should have known better to trust an earthly pokémon so well. Grabbe kept trying to get him to see the proof right in front of him, but the violent behavior didn't convince him. But stealing his teacher's scarf? That was pure betrayal. Instead of throwing the fit he really wanted to have, he took a few deep breaths and reinspected the meager amount of hiding places in the shed.

The only place he didn't want to look in was her heavy trunk. Its security consisted of a very weighty lid and a deep crevice inside. It was taller than he was; even if Lugum threw his scarf in there while taking care of him, the small mudkip didn't want to get buried with it. A look, however, wouldn't hurt anybody. He scampered over to the lid and pushed it open with his head-fin.

And, of course, it was totally barren of interesting stuff. The riolu jumped at the opportunity of for payment, so it made sense that the chest held no cool earthly things: A satchel with a gaping hole, a depressingly inadequate collection of training equipment, an ancient picture of a black and white scribble drawn with crayons, a crusty box that once held crayons, and a fairly hopeful streak of a scarf hidden under it. These objects documented the riolu's entire life. Or what she was fine with a curious mudkip seeing. The scarf taunted him from the very bottom of the chest, out of his reach.

He didn't want to stretch out and grab it, lest he fall in, so he simply leaned over the edge and inspected the cloth. With the sun covered by the baffling rain, it was just dark enough to hide the scarf's color. The mudkip twisted and used a back leg to push the bleak daytime into the chest. It worked to a degree, and the mudkip craned his head to see it better.

Right when he was on the edge of discovering its details, someone knocked on the shed's door. No one worth meeting needed to knock before entering the shed, a fact that made Acker freeze with apprehension.

"Hello, is this the home of Lugum the riolu? You've been selected for punishment. Come out, or we'll be forced to come in."

"Just break down the damned door. I bet the local lot's already nabbed in her in the city, by now. I'm cold - break down the door, already!"

Punishers were looking for Lugum and had possibly found her. And Grabbe as well. Focusing on that was a bad idea, because it startled Acker and he lost his precarious spot on top of the chest. He slid down into the chest on accident. Not only that, but he let out a scared yelp as the chest ate him up.

"What was that? Didn't sound like a female riolu to me," the first voice said. "What's the plan?" The pitch black muffled both the mudkip's hearing and sight.

"Sounds like a kid. These runaways love to create packs," the leader explained to his lackey. Obviously, one of them had seniority over the other. The sheer idea of merit existing between a group of torturers and murderers sickened the mudkip. A few powerful blows loudly cracked the door into smithereens, even so there was no way to lock it.

"Come out, little guy, we're not planning on hurting you." Nothing mattered to them, not even their lies, which only showed their true intentions. It was Keen all over again, but this time without the chance of help.

Thankfully, the darkness also did him some favors; he took the musty scarf in the chest and pretended that he was holding a part of teacher Brazen. Of Brazen the _Guardian_. The taste clogged his mouth with a sick layer of dust as he wrapped it around his leg. Which was better by now, but he wanted reasons for the two punishers to underestimate him.

"Arceus, I do this in your service," Acker prayed. "I have no time to say my Guardian vows in full, but I will serve you. Only you can issue punishment justly... give me the strength to punish these pretenders." He inhaled deeply, releasing it in the scream of a scared child.

"H-help me, help! Is someone here? Get me out of this box!"

Instantly the lid of the chest broke off of its hinges. A heracross ripped him away from the other contents and threw him to the ground. "Now, what are you doing here, 'kip?" The leader and his lackey chuckled at the spectacle of Acker's fake panic.

It was _technically_ her fault, so Acker only sold them a half-lie. "Lugum put me in there. She p-promised to get me, but that was a big lie! Thank you... I think I'll get going, now."

The kabutops serving the heracross blocked his path with a bladed arm. It was long enough to chop the mudkip into neat halves. "Sorry, kid, but we can't just yet." The leader motioned for a quick chat on what to do with their catch. He adjusted his satchel and spoke to his companion privately. In a way, though, they spoke loudly enough for him to hear. They liked to make others afraid.

"Arceus damn this distraction," the heracross cursed. "We could have been catching higher prizes in Oranwreath, but Mantidae dragged us out here just to spite that demonic sheriff. No one goes this far to fulfill a punishment to somewhere like Proxima Forest - unless they've got a score to settle."

"Whoa, wait, what job?"

"Whole den of the runaways under the inn. Sheriff said he'd wait for me - he owes me a favor, you see. Anyway, a mudkip around ten years old isn't worth the food we ate on the way here. Plus that large head makes it too clunky to just... you know."

"Let's just get rid of the problem, fast, then." He clicked his blades together and turned around. "Sorry, little 'kip, but you should have kept your mouth- ah!"

Facing two heavier opponents from the front was hard and stupid to try, but the sides became a different story. When a small, righteously-minded mudkip ran between their legs, they instinctively tried to stamp the life out of him. The leader pulled back his leg with a debilitating, targeted gash. When the kabutops smartly knelt down to get a better angle, Acker bounded forward with a tiny hop, dodged his wide swing, and broke his bent leg with a kick that carried both strength and leverage.

Afterwards, Acker scampered around the room in a wide circle. Torrents of water shot by his head. Water was a tricky element. Water cooled Acker down in the morning and poked holes through solid wood when spat at him. Like all small things, the skillful application of water tore through enemies faster than any blade. Not that the kabutops was at all skillful.

The heracross dived forward to gore him with his single horn, which would painfully end his little run. Luckily, Acker's head-fin tore through his leg well, making him stumbled awkwardly.

It was obvious why the kabutops followed the other bug type around; after a minute of trying to hit the target, he had no more air to help him shoot the water. Acker stopped running in front of them, allowing them to get a good look at the mudkip. The kabutops leaned onto his good leg and panted, while the leader started to, oddly enough, eat some berries from his bag.

"What are you?!" The lackey screamed. "Stay away from us!"

"For Arceus!" Acker shot forward and leaped over the kabutops's desperate attack. With a spinning kick from his hind leg, he knocked the bladed opponent out.

He then tumbled out of the way before the other punisher slammed his spiked arms into him.

But there was a problem. The heracross roared and kept coming at him somehow, his leg miraculously healed by a few berries. He practiced all of the legwork Brazen taught him, but this punisher still outdid him in a straight fight due to his fighting type. An empowered swing sent the odds and ends of Lugum's trunk all over the place.

Not only did he have that advantage, but the punisher transitioned between his affinities well, ducking his head for a new method of attack. Tiny, poisonous needles nearly scraped his side. Scrapes would make him slightly dizzy, thanks to Brazen's help in building up his immunity, but a few good hits would lock his body up in seconds.

"Where did the runt of the litter learn to fight?" He taunted. "The butcher will mistake you for petty livestock."

"You're just a bully!" Acker yelled, preparing for another round.

"A bully that _kills_!" His single horn whirred up for a split second before shooting out. Acker instinctively dodged the moment the noise began, knowing full well that it only meant disaster. The horn-turned-missile crashed through the wall of Lugum's home, taking the entire wall with it. The sheer wind of the move nearly imbalanced his stance by itself.

Obviously not expecting the mudkip to be conditioned to the attack, the leader expended every advantage he had on the move. After that, it was a simple round of breaking limbs the heracross could no longer protect. This time, he snapped the leather strap around the heracross's chest and kicked the bag away.

"My teacher always told me to never use techniques freely," Acker told the writhing punisher. "It tires you out." He looked down at the scarf he tied about his leg. It was a dark blue. It reminded him that he wasn't done working just yet. Not until the mission to protect Grabbe was fulfilled.

"S-so... this your revenge fantasy, huh?" The heracross coughed and tried to roll onto his back. "Go on, finish it. Once Mantidae finds out, I'll lose everything anyway."

The mudkip shook his head and smiled, like Brazen would. He tapped the heracross's nose with a paw, winding up for the ending blow. "No, I'm not going to kill you. I want you to think about what you're doing."

He kicked the heracross in the face one more time before running into the rain, where he ran into a frazzled hawlucha.

"Acker, what is all of this?! What _happened?" _The small mudkip checked out the number he did on Lugum's makeshift home. Any word short of _annihilated_ would be an understatement. After the missile tore half of the shed away from its whole, it wobbled several times before collapsing into a pile of soggy wood. Grabbe pulled him in close and hugged him. "Arceus, Acker, I ran as fast as I could. I d-didn't know that they'd be looking everywhere. We need to hide somewhere before more come."

"We don't need to hide, because they won't be looking for us in Proxima Forest." It surprised the hawlucha that Acker had put it all together.

He shook his head. "Acker, I want to save her too, b-but this? This is too much. We can't go to the center-"

"Are you serious, Grabbe?" Standing around and arguing with Grabbe only wasted precious time. He briskly walked away from the destroyed shed. Whether the scared hawlucha followed or not, he was going to resolve this problem to the best of his ability. "You said it yourself, that you wanted to leave boring old Pleasantry behind. Well this is what service looks like in the earthly world."

"That's not the only reason I left! You're oversimplifying things, younger sibling." Acker growled at the utterance of _younger sibling_, but Grabbe continued on strong. "A suicide mission won't make Arceus happy with you. I wanted us to adapt, to expand our horizons together, to find ourselves beyond post office worker, or Guardian... dying in the first week doesn't fulfill that. T-to brotherhood, right?" Raindrops streaked down his face as he waited for an answer

So that was it. Grabbe had honestly abandoned any desire to benefit Arceus. Even when an unanswered threat exposed itself in front of him, he wouldn't respond. "Brotherhood had very little to do with it," he admitted. "Brazen told me to follow and protect you. That's the only reason I came at all."

Instead of yelling or panicking, the older sibling sat down in the muddy trail and watched his talons slowly wiggle. He nodded understandingly and pushed out a bittersweet laugh. "Your teacher played us both, Acker. The day before Temporal Tower crumbled... he told me about reform B. I thought it was a way of punishing me... but he actually wanted me to try and escape."

Reform B, one of two sentences carried out by Pleasantry's rarely used justice system. Nobody except the most highly ranked knew what it meant. It was what Grabbe's older sibling received. "What's reform B?" Acker felt obligated to ask.

"Execution." Acker took a step back and gasped. "They killed my older sibling, Acker, and Brazen said that I was next. I'm an enemy of Pleasantry, and it's all because I know how to twist some knobs on a stupid gear!"

It made Acker sad to see how he curled up again, yet relieved to finally know about what problems the hawlucha dealt with inside. But his crying was literally killing Lugum. His teacher said that Grabbe knew best in regards to Arceus's wishes, but self-doubt had gotten in the way of that; it was up to Acker to save the hawlucha from his own worry.

"Prove them wrong," he finally said.

"What do you mean?"

"Brazen obviously gave you an opportunity to prove yourself," Acker told him. "Maybe they really do find you dangerous, because of what you know. Brazen sent you into the earthly world to solve _this_ problem, Grabbe! This is your only chance to show everyone that you're a good servant! Now we've got to take it now, because if Lugum dies, Brazen will have risked his life for nothing." Grabbe didn't move from his spot, which made Acker impatient. "_Get up!" _He yelled, causing the hawlucha to finally flinch.

He found the idea of it terrible but necessary. "I'll grab a few things from her shed." He sighed and struggled back up to his feet. "And then... we head over to Proxima Forest.

* * *

After salvaging everything he could from Lugum's shed and placing it in the tattered satchel, the two siblings traveled over to Proxima Forest. Compared to its sunnier counterpart, the forest they arrived at had taken on a grayish hue, as if it anticipated the violence to be contained within.

"Well, Grabbe, any idea of where they are?" Acker asked him.

The hawlucha hesitated, but only because he did have an idea of where to start. "There was a smaller trail leading into the forest. It starts around where we woke up." The creek started to push up the hill to their left, covering any landmarks - not that Grabbe remembered any. Scents disappeared and paths erased themselves in the rain that just wouldn't stop. "We can't even get to them!" The hawlucha took in shallow breaths and paced about the trail.

Acker wiped his nose with a paw and laid down, thinking hard about their situation. "This stinks."

"Okay, I know you're ten, but this more than stinks. Lugum is going to die if we can't find her!"

"No, something _stinks_, Grabbe. It's almost gone, but still there..."

He halted in the middle of a sulky step and started sniffing around. "That's Klots! They can't be too far from this spot, then... do you think it's possible to track them?" Acker had a sense of the smell, but couldn't place its direction too well. He moved in a full circle, hoping to get lucky. "Acker, quit sniffing! We know they're in the forest, what I want you to do is use your head-fin!"

That seemed strange to the mudkip, since his head-fin didn't have a nose. It was thin enough to cut through an enemy given enough force, but its range of applications started and ended there. "Grabbe, I don't know what you're talking about- gah!"

Not willing to wait around, Grabbe pushed his head into the ground. "Remember how I'd put apples on your fin, and it'd throw your balance off? That's because It keeps both your movement and the movement of others in check. Brazen was probably going to tell you, sooner or later." Acker squirmed at first, but suddenly became focused on the ground. The rain pulsated through the ground, yet the distinct poundings of a giant pokémon were conspicuous compared to the gentle patters.

After that initial push which brought him to the forest, Grabbe had instantly assumed the role of older sibling again. Maybe it was him wanting to be in control. Or, though Acker still had his reservations, the hawlucha genuinely had a knack for bossing others around - maybe even in a good way. "Grabbe, I feel them!" He shouted happily. "Follow me!"

With the help of a natural radar, finding both their clearing and the small path Grabbe spoke of became a cinch. "I can't believe this. Everything in a huge radius - I just... I feel it, Grabbe!" He'd love to enable this feeling permanently. Seeing everything in bumps and vibrations was more reliable than his vision.

The ability had limitations, though; a sudden torrent of vibrations assaulted his left side. "Hey, stop talking, it's messing with my sense of direction." The obstructive hawlucha tried to push him off the trail, and that was when Acker suspected that something was wrong.

Then came the other voices on him. Acker quickly shook off his new detection abilities and scanned the area. What he found was a growling mightyena and a terrifyingly large houndoom. "K-Klots? You're a punisher?"

"Acksel told you to run," the mightyena said. He was an emotional wreck. "And instead you bring your younger brother here?"

"I'm here to stop you! Where's Lugum?"

"You demented bastard. What did you tell him, Grabbe? Amnesia is no excuse-"

"Child, what's that scarf on your leg?"

The instant Acker heard that authoritative, booming voice, Acker was mesmerized. "It's Lugum's scarf. She took mine, so I had to put on another one. It's important to me and I want to get it back."

Klots shook his head wildly. "I'm not letting your brother corral you into a punishment." He stumbled over to a certain section of the forest, one with an odd cluster of trees. An odder smell came from it, like it was an entirely new forest within Proxima Forest. "Listen to me, you're not allowed to go in."

There was no way they could win this fight head on. He hated the notion of bargaining with the detestable pokémon in front of him, but he had no choice. "Why do I need to be selected to go in? Grabbe has nothing to do with this; by my own free will, I want to be punished! I'm ready for it... just ask your underlings back at Lugum's shed."

Acksel looked up at the treeline, his emotionless eyes not betraying his thoughts on the matter. "Are you a part of Rénert's... club?" Acker nodded, once again choosing a lie over the alternatives. The answer forced a sigh from the houndoom.

"All of you are rot," he stated simply. "Growing everywhere, taking root in the villages and the towns, causing trouble in what should be a fairly simple system to follow."

"I'm sorry, sir." Grabbe roughly nudged his side. The mudkip nearly bit his tongue - he respected his elders out of basic habit. Brazen respected everyone, including pokémon like Acksel.

"Do not mind me too much, mudkip," Acksel said. "I would like a warning of future... _rescues,_ I suppose, in advance. Klots, move aside and let the mudkip through."

Klots shook his head. "No."

Judging by the houndoom's response, the rain tonight would be busy washing the remnants of mightyena out of the muddy soil. "Excuse me?"

"I refuse to encourage these two to their graves!" The apprentice punisher sniffled and stood his ground. If they wrestled with him and he injured one of them, they wouldn't be of any use to Lugum. Unable to displace him through force, Grabbe started to walk forward with a more creative approach.

"How dare you talk about being a responsible deputy, now?" He asked angrily. "When just three days ago you allowed me to get kidnapped by Lugum?" He motioned to Acker, who caught on to his plan quickly.

The mightyena bared his teeth. "What are you playing at? That was thirty years ago. Forty minutes ago. A day or a week ago, give or take a year." The punisher scrabbled at the ground underneath him, unable to figure out the discrepancy in time. "N-no... no! Acksel, save me! They've ruined something, I can feel it, I can-"

With a valiant roar urging him forward, he tackled the mightyena and brought him to the ground. In seconds the superior opponent had the hawlucha pinned to the ground, teeth wrapped around his throat. But Acker was gone already, into the section of the forest Klots desperately guarded. The pressure around his neck intensified, reaching the point of penetration that would allow Klots's fangs to dig into his throat.

"Enough, Klots."

"He killed that little 'kip. I'll make him pay."

"You have already disobeyed me once today. I promise that, in the case that neither of them return, you will be allowed to kill the hawlucha."

A few more tense seconds passed before Grabbe's second encounter with deadly teeth passed. Klots backed away from him, a wolfish smile on his face. "I'll take you to my house," he said, ripping away Grabbe's bag. "I can keep your alive for hours before finishing you off..." a small drawing fell out from a hole in the bag. He took a good, long look at it before picking it up. He walked away from his quarry wordlessly.

Grabbe lifted himself up and rubbed his throat, fearing for his life. No sounds came from inside the area Acker ran into, and it was now or never; Grabbe would either see Brazen's personal student become a hero or a failure. It was time to see if they had a reason to be in the earthly world.


	8. Proxima Forest 2: A Greatbeast

Acker's destination contained within the forest Klots forbade him to enter was only another problem, but a whimsical problem. Whereas the rain came in great heaves outside, gathering on the treeline before falling all at once, a bright sun overhead gave the place a sweet green hue. It was so sweet, actually, it sickened the young Guardian while also reminding him of the same foreign sensation of seeing so many trees bunched together.

Compared to the rest of the forest, the aptly named 'punishment' pressed a sense of judgment on him. It evaluated him silently, never revealing if it boded good or evil for its guest, who tried desperately to remember where had felt this before. Evenly placed trees restricted his choices to forward or backward. A fairly straightforward place to be, except that Acker's radar was too fickle and his foresting skills too immature to realize this. Was it natural for to provide such a clean path? Senseless of his potential directions, finding Lugum was at best a fifty-fifty shot.

If he intended to do the right thing, he'd have to choose caution over the guts which brought him here. And Acker's wits told him to follow his guts anyway, because Lugum didn't practice any kind of caution. Or did she? Acker hated to admit that he needed the hawlucha for his experience with the riolu, and for his uninvited knowledge of confounded things.

"He hasn't led me anywhere good so far," he said. "I bet he surrendered to Klots, just so he wouldn't have to help. C-coward." He'd happily complain about Grabbe, if it helped bolster his own wavering confidence. Instead, the insult made him guilty, frustrated and confused. "Gah..." as lost as he was, the punishment waited patiently. It was more than happy to stand aside and let the mudkip waste time, sure that its quarry would come around eventually...

"Hippie-ta-thrill!" Acker shouted in questionable triumph. "Uh, I mean, hypaethral." His current situation was exactly like dipping his paw into the basin atop the marble steps, back in the home he missed intensely. The journey ahead of him made him desperate and smothered his confidence. The warm light of Arceus lifted him above those fears, but he knew that only he provided warmth, now. Where he went, Proxima Forest determined if it liked or hated his choice - ripples in the forest based on his free will. Going back would disappoint it, then, so he moved for the first time in a couple minutes.

The forest bristled with a small, calming breeze in response. It came to life, breathing in and out as if it had lungs to fill. "Hello, Proxima Forest," Acker whispered.

The next step yielded no further change in the forest, nor the third. Was the usual conclusion to these treks starvation or insanity - or one after the other? The monotonous pace of the forest reached a point that could only be described as maddening. "I'm getting bored, here," he casually mentioned to the trees. Talking to trees fulfilled the insane part of his prediction, and his stomach rumbled soon after.

"Forward," he whispered, trying to convince himself to keep going.

A small scuffle behind the nearby trees posed a better argument. Then the noise panted and writhed at the startled pokémon. He hit the ground in an impromptu tumble, smacking his face against the twig-littered floor. The gut-wrenching sound turned out to be an opening path, ripping through hard oak in order to cut a new, thinner trail. The remnant's resting place was beyond Acker's best guesses. From the jumbled heap he ended up in, his eyes gazed through the new opening at the downed riolu at the other side. She noticed the trail as well, starting a panicked crawl for its protection. She fell flat on her stomach and ended up catching sight of her meager rescue.

Whatever she wanted to shout to the mudkip on the other side was stifled, and then replaced. She screamed Klots's name as a mightyena jumped on top of her, gleaming white fangs working their way up to her neck. The imperiled riolu tried to shake off her attack. Too painful to keep up, she suddenly wrapped both arms around the mightyena's stooped neck.

Did Klots follow him into the strange section of the forest? Did it make him psychotic enough to try and kill the first face he saw? Acker wanted to understand why the clumsy deputy, the reluctant punisher, became a cold killer. A desire which would take a few more seconds of hard thinking.

A few more seconds would kill Lugum. Acker dropped his head and charged. He resisted his terror-ridden thoughts in a separate but equally important battle. This was the moment of truth, the beginning of redeeming himself. He had to save Lugum, helpless and injured, before the feral Klots could-

_Crack_. Lugum wrenched back, dragging Klots's neck forward with her arms and his body back with her legs. The rest of the attacker's breath left him in a strange whistle, emptying the dire light in his eyes and sending him crashing into the ground, teeth still stubbornly locked in Lugum's shoulder.

She ripped them out and tried to stand up. What Acker witnessed, however, wasn't the first time Klots bit into her; the shocked riolu tripped when her weakened right leg gave out unexpectedly. Still in the new pathway, an equally shocked mudkip watched as she threw up her paws protectively, trying to warn further predators.

"Acker," she called out, voice hoarse and empty. In another split-second, though, she regained some of her determination. "Run! I'll hold them off, okay?"

Whoever or whatever came from beyond that thin opening, Acker wouldn't allow them to reach their prey. He used a distance closing leap, caring more for what followed than its form. Once he saw his enemies - two more mightyena approaching at an alarming speed, teeth bared and ready to kill - he immediately did his best to stop both of them from reaching their mark.

In a very odd, unwarranted way, Acker felt slighted when the pair of hunters chose to completely ignore him. They realized their grievous decision far too late, finding a previously perfect charge reduced to jumbled tatters. One of them acted as Acker's way to cover the split between them, his head providing just the right amount of bounce for the light pokémon's hind legs. The other one, on the left, tried to run by the sharped fin on top of Acker's head. More sensitive to its radar features, Acker swore that he sensed how the mightyena's blood pulsed finely until it reached the long cut. Both of them yelped in surprise and stumbled away from each other.

Luckily, Lugum was ready to react. From her spot on the reddened grass, she sent a straight kick into her enemy's teeth, putting it into an agonizing daze. Another swiping kick to the side of his head ensured that the hunter would be off of his game for a long time.

As for the other mightyena, simply pushed out of the way, the prospects lowered substantially. With one pack-mate dead and another unconscious, it frantically charged up its dark energy in an attempt to use its panic against the mudkip. Its dire howl picked up in pitch until Lugum was forced to cover the ear she could still get to.

Still baffled by his head-fin's unwanted feature, Acker didn't even try to avoid the resulting pulse of explosive dark energy. He did, however, at least manage to rebound successfully from slamming into the tree. Like Brazen instructed, the Guardian flipped midair and planted his paws evenly on the tree. Its wood cracked under the force Acker slowly fed into it. At the same time, the dark pulse's latent energy filled the air, filling his chest with cloying, harmful energy.

Successfully recovered without a broken leg, Acker dropped down from the tree, hoping to finish the fight before the remaining darkness choked or blinded him. The mightyena helped close the gap, thankfully. The Guardian and the hunter met face-to-face, but only Acker had the speed to suddenly whip away from his foe's attack. Gone away and back again, the mightyena hardly had the time to respond with his own speed before Acker's back paws pounded him - one neatly placed to each eye, maximizing the disorientation.

And before the mightyena shook off the attack, Lugum came from his side and lifted him up with her good arm. She winded back recklessly, hardly caring for herself, as long as the mightyena also hit the ground hard. A good twist, a mean landing, and the intense moment finished as quickly as it arrived.

Acker got through the fight with little more than some sore spots on the bottom of his paws and a small cough from the darkness. Lugum, on the other hand, suffered harshly from the encounter. Regardless of her condition, she rolled away from their last foe and sat up hesitantly. The wound on her chest matted the once-ruffled fur on her chest. A pinkish tint dried onto the lower parts of her body, unable to be reached by the wound which was somehow already closing. The same went for her leg as well. A well-crafted lid kept the contents of her satchel from being similarly stained. The forest definitely held a kind of healing power, mending the riolu's physical wounds. For what laid on the inside, however, the punishment only worsened her condition.

"Klots," she said eventually. "That wasn't him."

She was right; the feral mightyena shared the breed of the deputy, but not his specific patterns of fur, nor his look. "I know," Acker responded.

"For almost nine years," Lugum breathed. "I've been steeling myself for that moment for nine years. Even since Klots cleared his punishment. But instead of coming back, he left to become a punisher. He was supposed to pay for that, one of these days - v-very soon, too. T-though I'm not sure I can do that again, Nine years of pent up fury... wasted." She wiped her shoulder slowly, flicking off the blood into the grass below. "I can't believe I actually went through with it at all, even if it wasn't Klots. Maybe I deserve to be punished."

It never ceased to stagger Acker, how much Brazen saved him from these kind of ordeals. In many ways, Acker was beginning to see why his teacher, though he could have simply incapacitated Keen, decided to kill him. It was an example. "Lugum, that mightyena gave you the choice to either live or die," he said, putting those lessons to good use. He placed a front paw on her leg comfortingly. "That you chose to live has nothing to do with you being bad, okay?"

The answer was a tight huge that squeezed the air out him. "You're so strong, y-you saved my life," she said after a shuddering sob. "I had a feeling that your amnesia story was just a cover story!"

Acker broke the hug and stepped back, apprehensive of her decision to call out the story in a place like this. "What do you mean?"

Lugum wordlessly wobbled back to her feet, ignoring the trailing flinches in her bitten leg. She assumed a tightly composed salute. "You two are definitely R&R spies!"

Saying _yes_ would be another lie, so he smartly played it dumb, letting her reach her own conclusions. Besides that, he had no clue about anything she had just said. "Oh?"

"It should have been more obvious to me. Sunstarch is far enough away from the Capitol to be ignored, but close enough to be near the important stuff going on. You two worked together with R&R to create your cover story, right? Down to faking the fire and your wounds, I bet!" It was very far-fetched, but Lugum's eyes sparkled with delight at the possibility of it. "You wanted to take cover here under the guise of runaways, because the punishers are so lax compared to other villages. A-and you even tried desperately to register, so that Klots would try extra hard to protect you and your 'crazy brother' from anyone who could lead you to a registration office! And then..." the riolu looked down shamefully. "And then I kidnapped you and screwed it all up. Wow... I messed it up twice over by getting punished today. I'm terrible... please forgive me!"

Whatever was going through her head, Acker didn't want to mess with it, lest he blow it up completely. He insisted that she did nothing wrong, reducing her groveling a little.

"I'll pull my own weight, got it? If it helps keep your cover, I'm all for it!" She gritted her teeth, barely able to handle the excitement. "I can't believe that you're actually from Rebellion and Repulsion, Acker! Anything that comes next, I'll take it on solo! Bring it on, ha!" A small yelp accompanied her attempt to punch the air. The mess her wounds left behind were horrifying, likely to stop less prepared pokémon in their tracks. And with the murder just minutes ago still lingering over her head, Acker knew that Rebellion and Repulsion - whatever it may entail - inspired the riolu more than any talk ever could. She gave him an unsure yet happy look. "So, what _is _next?"

"That's Grabbe's department," he blurted out. "Uh, he got stuck outside distracting the punishers. B-but I think it has something to do with that new path over there!" Proxima Forest appreciated his efforts to save the riolu, opening a new path in the small clearing as he spoke. He beckoned for Lugum to follow, but suddenly remember something. "Oh. Lugum, I want my scarf back. I'll trade you this blue one I found in your trunk."

It made her sad to let go of the spy's scarf, but she was more than happy to oblige. When Acker lifted up his paw with the blue scarf, Lugum unwrapped it slowly. She took it up into her paws, inspected it for a moment, and then tossed its shoddy fabric onto the dead mightyena. "Let's go get un-punished!"

* * *

**Proxima Forest Punishment, Section Two**

Once he entered the second path of the punishment, Acker knew that its power was beyond natural. For one, he was attentive enough to notice himself cross into a freezing stream that rose up to his neck. The more confusing part was what the creek's bottom consisted of: marvelous, smooth stone. Unlike the roughly textured rocks he expected, the smooth rock seemed to be ancient parts of a construction. The moss covering some of its pieces squished wonderfully under his paws. Other than that, it was as if someone had flooded the dry forest while he wasn't looking.

Lugum adjusted her satchel and wiggled her feet under the water. "I'm just saying it now," she said, right then. "These metal bracers on my arms make me an incredibly bad swimmer. If I fall into deep water..."

"Try to focus on other stuff." Acker's recommendation led to her squashing the moss under the water. The way she walked about half-dyed in blood made Acker almost wish she could have a harmless fall into some water. "Okay, let's go forward again. If we can, we should also find food."

"I would like that... I'm starving!" Lugum groaned loudly and shuffled forward in the water, starting their trek. Arms relaxed over her head, she trudged along and tried to settle her shaking nerves with a casual talk. "So, uh, Acker?"

"What's up?"

"Remember how I was beating Grabbe up today? Could he, you know, just straight up kill me with a technique whenever he wanted? I bet that you've learned a lot of lethal moves."

"No, he couldn't. He's the brains of our team. Hardly any combat experience to him at all." Just some fights on a playground, where there were more rules than structures to play on... it was mostly a good thing that Grabbe didn't make it into the punishment.

Suddenly, Lugum plucked him out of the water. Acker tried to squirm away from her injured shoulder, only to notice that the wound had already healed itself. "I hope that all of this cuteness isn't just an act. It _would_be pretty useful, I guess."

"I am a trained operative. Please put me down."

She lifted him up to toward the light shining above, smiling at him while walking backwards. It was very risky to do. "I don't know where I went wrong. I accidentally became very ugly, somewhere between eight and nine. Anyways, I saw your training at work, Acker. You were like my guardian angel, except you sort of needed my help to finish them off, because you're a mini guardian angel. Is it okay if I tote you around in my satchel as a concealed weapon? Oh no, i-is that insulting to your spy-hood?! My bad!"

"It's fine," Acker muttered. "And watch out for the waterfall."

"Wait is that an okay to put you in my bag, or you accepting my apology?"

"T-the apology - Lugum, please put me down before we fall down the waterfall!"

After realizing what he meant, she quickly set him back onto the ground and turned. What they saw shocked them both.

They had somehow came across a lake hidden inside Proxima Forest. Its sides dropped down into a pit filled with shining water It was the largest body of water Acker had ever laid eyes upon, so deep and full that he nearly called it the ocean, because its gigantic range had to be close to the ocean's size. From their spot atop the waterfall, the water flowing around them plummeted into the the rocky edges of the lake, petty drops in a large basin of the green-hued, shimmering liquid.

And that wasn't even the best part: the ancient ruins of a grand tower, which did its mysterious ancestors well in displaying their lost grandeur. The ancestors had constructed a castle in the middle of the lake, surrounding it with three towers, now fallen and pushing into the castle's sides. These towers used to stand in between the other waterfalls pouring into the lake. Now unsupported, each of the stone giants surfaced from the water like a beastly new form of pokémon. One of the towers fell in an odd direction, forming an easy walkway up to a different waterfall.

It was beautiful, but inaccessible. They could maybe jump down and swim to one of the crushed towers, climb up to the castle, and use the other tower to reach the top of a new waterfall. That assumed that they could both swim, sadly. "Oh Arceus." Lugum breathed slowly, trying to take it all in. "It's so amazing. I don't know if I can swim to anything, though." She wiped her eyes and turned to Acker, dropping the subject before it even began.

"Is it okay... is it alright for me to _like_ my punishment? It's mostly because I know you won't let me down - it'd be scary otherwise... but you're by my side, and all I can think about is how wonderful this place is. It reminds me of a story I heard once! It makes me feel happy to remember."

Acker couldn't resist returning the sentiment with a warm smile. "Me too, Lugum. But don't think for a second that it's a reward. The forest knows you can't swim. You shouldn't have said anything about it out loud. There's something in that water ready to mess with us."

Lugum's odd look was trumped by respect for the supposed spy. "I'm sorry. What's the plan?"

During their incredibly violent and strange bath just this morning (though it seemed like years ago, now), Lugum proved willing to hold her breath. "Okay, I got it!" Acker wiggled against Lugum's satchel strap until he slipped smugly under its leather. With a grunt. He leaned over and picked up the riolu.

"I'm already not liking this plan. Kudos on lifting me, though. You're really strong! You... you can just set me down, now."

"Thanks." Acker walked backwards, winding up his run in order to clear the rocks directly below the waterfall. Plus, every bit of distance in his jump meant less time Lugum spent submerged - Acker could swim with her on his back, but not above the water. "Ready?"

"I'm really sorry about the cute comment. If that's what this is about - A-acker, _no-oo-o_!"

It was a seventy foot drop to the water, enough to slap Acker's stomach and leave a stinging wound. Like he hoped for, swimming above and below the water came naturally to him. If it wasn't for the riolu strapped to his back, he'd take the time to enjoy his ability to swim under the refreshing water. Lugum's safety in mind, he swam as quickly as possibly, undulated faster and faster as he got used to the idea of swimming.

Something bumped into his side, causing him to nearly flip upside down. The mudkip started to think up ways of aquatic combat, but his foe turned out to be a humble magikarp. Lugum helpfully kicked it away from them, and a few more strokes brought the submerged section of the tower into view.

He knew it was irresponsible, but Acker wanted to drop Lugum off on the tower and explore for a bit. Swimming was simply too fun to pass up so easily.

A shining gem at the lake's floor peaked his interest to its maximum. He nearly went down to retrieve it right then, but Lugum started to buck about on his back, trying to pull him up to the surface. Acker received the message well, quickly racing to the tower. He scrabbled up its underwater part until they finally cleared the surface again.

Acker deftly slipped out of the satchel strap and checked on Lugum. She shot up, gasping for breath. "What's... wrong with you?!" She asked between pants. "Taking... a few detours while we're down there? And what up with that magikarp? Like it even had a chance against our unstoppable duo!"

When the pokémon angry at him complimented him by the end of her ranting, he honestly had no idea how to respond. "Sorry," he said. "I saw a gem on the floor of the lake. It was really nice."

"Oh, I'd nearly drown you for a chance at that, too." Lugum spat out some water and laid against the sunbathed stone. "I'll wait here while you get it. That'll give me some time to develop my long-lasting fear of deep bodies of water."

Given the permission he didn't really need, Acker promptly went for a second dive and obtained the gem, which was really a lustrous orb. He had no idea what it was, or why the punishment decided to give it to them. Lugum jokingly referred to the orb as _not_ _food_ and professed her desire to sell it for _tons of hard cash _before throwing it into her satchel. The Guardian, however, wanted to let Grabbe have a look at it - somehow, he knew that the orb had an underlying purpose.

"I bet," Lugum said as they traversed the roof of the castle, "that whoever owned this castle bought it by selling off orbs just like ours. We're basically filthy stinking rich, Acker. No more sheds for us!" They navigated the rest of the rubble that used to be a lovely, lavish place to live. It surprised Acker to find the most amazing things about the earthly world within something called a punishment.

Thankfully for the poor swimmer, the tower leading up the waterfall was close enough for her to jump down and wade over to it. They did so, walking once again across one of the slanted ginormous towers after the effort. "That's really good news, Lugum, since I sort of destroyed your shed fighting punishers!"

Lugum gave him a respectful pat on the back as they neared the mouth of the waterfall. "You're super extreme, so amazing it hurts - _yeouch!"_

Only the sudden movement tower reminded Lugum that her leg still hurt. "Okay. That can't be good." Acker stepped back and gaped as separate parts of the tower began to rotate slowly, a wrenching _whir_ sending them into a fierce rumble. "Remember how I said this reminded me of a story I heard?"

"...Yeah?"

"Well, you see, it's a urban legend sort of thing. Once upon a time, near Sunstarch, there was this castle with three towers."

"Oh? Like this one?" The spinning became faster, sealing off the remaining path. Any attempt to cross would throw them into the water, no where for Lugum to surface.

"Yup. So there were three suitors for a lovely female, trying to win her favor and the kingdom. I like to pretend to be the girl sometimes, I know that wish-fulfillment doesn't lead anywhere but I have needs-"

"Lugum, seriously, hurry it up!" The _whirs_ became actual groans over time, or maybe the sheer grinding of stone made him hear things that weren't there.

"Sorry, Acker! Anyway, the three discovered that they couldn't kill the other suitors, who slept in the other towers. Each of them were imbued with ancient power blah blah blah, they transformed the towers into sentient Greatbeasts, and they fought. Everything was destroyed, end of s-story. "

Acker knew that word, _Greatbeast._ As the section in front of them stopped spinning, revealing dead stone eyes and a gaping mouth into ongoing darkness, Acker recalled Brazen's instruction on the subject._  
_

"_You will discover many oddities in the pokémon world, Acker. Our sworn duties to Arceus our creator requires us to trifle with them, from time to time. Assist in silly earthly world battles, or eradicate any problems left over by the action sphere, and so on. But even he refuses to throw Guardians at the worst mistakes of Pleasantry. The earthly pokémon call these horrifying errors Greatbeasts. When an accident like that approaches you, you do not try to solve it by choice..._

_"you retreat as fast as you can!"_

Too late for that, to Acker's discontent.

"Stone doesn't recover from its wounds!" Acker yelled. "We'll force it to reconsider its choice to attack us!" Lugum nodded and threw her paws up in a meek stance, ready to follow her savior, the fake R&R spy, into battle.


End file.
